Unofficial news and tips about Google

December 13, 2010

Win a Chrome OS Notebook

When I started this blog, Google Operating System was just a metaphor for a future when Google's apps will make your operating system irrelevant. We're not yet there, but we're close and Chrome OS is an attempt to show what's possible right now.

If you'd like to try an early version of Chrome OS on a notebook that's optimized for Chrome OS, post a short essay on the future of computing in a comment and you can win a Cr-48 Chrome notebook.

Here are the rules:

1. This competition is only open to USA residents. Google can't ship the notebook outside USA due to product certification requirements.2. You must be 18 years of age or older.3. Your essay must be original and it must be written in English.4. You should a include a way to contact you: a link to your Google profile, a link to your website, a link to your Twitter account etc.5. If you win the notebook, you're expected to use it regularly and send your feedback to Google.6. The competition ends 1:59pm Pacific Time on December 14.7. Only one of you will win the notebook.

Good luck!

Update (December 14): Thank you for all your great comments. I'll announce the winner tomorrow.

I apply i'm a developer for Mac OS X and iOS Platform, When i see Chrome OS i just really love it and want testing, I really think this is the future and for developer another great chance ;)My twitter is iMarck90 http://twitter.com/#!/iMarck90

Chrome OS is the biggest push to the Internet since Google.com. It has a great chance at being the future of mobile computing. I hope OEMs learn from the Cr-48 about how to design the computers of the future.

In a not too distant future i see computers (Android) ;), every where, in the bathroom mirror giving u the news, weather, at ur dining table telling u how many calories you are consuming; fully automated homes :), but i think the most important part will be focused in medical advantages, where every human will have all his medical records, info, etc, in a small microchip, giving to the paramedics all the info need it, saving more lives this way, cars with intelligent navigation system, like automated brakes in case of an emergency, alerting automatically to 911, more security for our children by detecting if they are home from school, i know all of this is already here, we just need the UI and the resources, here is where our goverment and Android comes in, i know some people think that computers are not that necesary, some people are even afraid or dont want to have nothing with computers, but the future is here and it will be the best think ever to happened to man kind.

If Chrome OS is the future of computing, it's for this reason: I want access to the same information, all the time, in different environments. It is an ergonomic principal at work: different devices are preferable as we move throughout our day. The desktop or laptop let's us work with the highly efficient combination of keyboard and mouse. The tablet is the ideal device for computing while walking, slouching, and lying down. The smartphone is the unobtrusive device, the bridge between computing spaces. The big screen television is becoming another window on the Internet device. Today, each piece requires a different set of skills and knowledge to build and access its tools. Someday, we may have a single operating system for interacting with all of these spaces. What else could it be, besides the Web?

The future of computing is device agnostic. Desktops, laptops, and mobile devices will be commoditized. Chrome OS will allow users to utilize any hardware to access their data. This makes computing simpler and data more accessible. The days of losing an important document because of equipment failure are numbered. If a computer dies in the middle of working on a document, that document is waiting in the cloud, ready to be accessed from another device. The future of computing is looking quite bright.

Instant, disposable and yet always there. ChromeOS is a step in the right direction. I write how-to's and provide online help through a forum. My 17" laptop is a tad unwieldy for just the internet. I don't need the extra frills, I just need the internet. There's a middle ground between smartphone and desktop/laptop computing, Chrome OS fills the gap perfectly, for me at least.

I don't think the future of computing will be 100% in the Cloud. I think it will be a cross between what we have now and complete reliance of the cloud. I think the majority of cloud computing will be with applications. Instead of purchasing, downloading and installing you will subscribe or buy a license and simply use the app from the web allowing the processing power to depend on the server and not your own machine. I think local storage will still exists, but I'm sure full online backups are going to be common place making computer restores a formality rather than a large undertaking. These things I feel are already in motion and for some are already a reality. Should be interesting to see what the future holds for us next.

I envision your phone being your entire computer. Instead of a heavy laptop with a dock, you will simply lay your phone on your desk, the one you carried from home, and it will connect wirelessly with your input and output devices.

The majority of the storage will be "cloud" but there will obviously be some local storage both for speed and security.

To prepare for the future of computing we have to also look at where we have come from. In just a short amount of time, we have gone from computers that filled a room to computers that fit in the palm of your hand. What will computing be like in another fifty years? I don’t think anyone can predict that. But, seeing how far we’ve come and how quickly technology is evolving, I think anyone’s guess is valid.

Computing as we know it is about to change. With very little restrictions in place, we are on the cusps of a new adventure in computing technology. The Ideas and innovation are ready to go, but restrictions such as infrastructure might be our last restriction to overcome.

“Cloud Computing” could be in our near future. We stream our movies, why not stream out Data? Why not stream our software? Why should we waste time installing applications over and over? When our infrastructure is able to support the bandwidth requirements to put everything and everybody on the “cloud”, then we will be able to say we’ve turned a new leaf in the computing world as we know it.

Chrome OS is the first step to breaking these restrictions. They have started the ball of innovation rolling. They are the “out of box thinkers”. The Cr-48 will allow the mass to raise the issue of infrastructure higher up the flag pull. Once people as a mass are using a computer that is able to perform the entire day to day task simplified and centralized on the “cloud”, then we will see the future of computing.

I shouldn't know anything about computing, that's the future. I shouldn't know anything about the local connection info or passwords, about viruses or network proxy settings, nor about the differences between MS Word, OpenOffice.Org Writer or Notepad. A whole list of shouldn'ts. I shouldn't have to know anything about security, privacy, phishing, hacking, or passwords. I shouldn't have to know about registries, system updates, nor 'You must reboot now to finish installation'. I shouldn't have to choose between Google Maps nor Bing Maps, Wordpress nor Blogger (author's note: Until someone catches up Google's awesomeness on nearly every front, I will choose Google's products every time). I know 'seamless' is used a lot, but it's used to describe small gains in removing fences between systems, but seamless should be a global constant, in both the programming sense and the paradigm sense. So I guess I'm saying the future of computing is more computing for a few elite programmers, and less computing for everyone else.

The future of computing is all about embedded. I'd imagine a computing device in each and every appliance. OS like chrome can make it happen with it's lightning speed and light weight it can fit into any appliance. Connectivity and personalization is two important aspects of these embedded devices.

Each year, scholarly speculation regarding the future of computing changes. Electrical and computer engineers must constantly evolve because of the rapid rate of obsolescence in the technology industry. Consumer needs can change on a whim, and with this, new analyses must be performed to evaluate the needs. Engineers must keep up with emerging technologies.

In the world of microcomputing, components are built to satisfy multiple needs. Consumers want smaller devices, but they also want faster devices. Often, today’s microcontrollers are custom-tailored for use in specific applications. They are being built with a smaller footprint. In these tiny packages, however, are often faster and more precise clock speeds. Additionally, the amount of available memory for program data has substantially increased, whilst prices remain low.

Furthermore, electrical engineers have been able to produce smaller and smaller transistors. In fact, they are so small, now, that they are no longer the limiting sizing element on printed circuit boards. This is interesting, and leads to another fascinating discussion regarding the technological achievements in the realm of personal computing.

In the personal computing industry, technology giants are constantly seeking to gain an edge on the competition. As far as operating systems, Google’s venture into cloud computing is not a new concept, per se. However, it has great potential. If consumers can adopt this platform, personal computing will be more flexible—almost disposable.

Future computers will likely be built to satisfy the needs of an “on-the-go” consumer base. This translates into more portable electronic devices. Manufacturers will likely experiment with different form factors, trying to bridge the gap between form and functionality. One functionality factor that will become even more critical in future computers is security. This will have to be managed in a way that doesn’t restrict the freedom of users, which is a difficult compromise to make.

Social media plays a large role in modern computing, and this trend will likely continue in some form. Consumers like to feel connected with others and with industry. This will be a driving force in the development of new networking technologies and protocols. Many of today’s networking protocols are slow and outdated, yet they are effective for modern use. In the future, speed and availability will be factors that push industry forward. New infrastructure will be required to effectively handle user demands.

All this appears to highlight an attractive future, but it may never happen. Nay—the future may be brighter. One of the long sought-after goals for physicists and engineers is the discovery of a room-temperature superconductor. If this feat is accomplished at a reasonable cost, the computing industry will be flipped upside-down. A room-temperature superconductor is a lossless means of transmission. Imagine a device with no internal impedance? All the energy could be used for its intended purpose, instead of being dissipated as heat. This would obviously reduce the overhead of cooling costs. New voltage sources (batteries) and energy storage elements would never need to be charged.

The future of computing is happening now, just in small doses. The past decade we saw the internet grow from a spam filled chat room lobby to PageRank kings to social influence.

Over the next decade we will see the social web grow and start to take on the form of a game, as it has already. Internet users will be rewarded for the actions they take. The reward may be as simple as an imaginary point system, a coupon or give away of some kind.

As more actions are taking place on the edge, most computing will take place through a browser. Since the internet is an open and platform Independence enviroment, development will be simpler and apps can reach a wider audience. Benefiting the users and the developers alike. I look forward to more of my computing going through my browser.

The future of computing isn't computers. Increasingly computational capacity is oozing into every aspect of our environment, from our phones to our toaster ovens. In the future nearly every tool we interact with will be connected to the network, and subsequently will be able to access vast amount of computational power.

People often cite "Moore's law" when talking about this trend, but Moore's law only tells part of the story. It's true that processing speed and storage capacity have been doubling every two years for decades. However the history of computing is marked not just by steady increases in computing capacity, but by a handful of watershed moments where entirely new modes of interacting with technology were invented. Looking back over the past decades we remember the development of the graphical user interfaces, the mouse, the word processor, the web browser.

Chrome OS could potentially mark a similarly profound leap forward. For the first time, all the layers between the network and the computer have been removed. The device itself is of little consequence; you can "feel right at home" from any networked device. Chrome OS isn't so much about what has been added, but what has been stripped out; no more complicated file systems, software updates, etc.

I'd love to beta test one of these notebooks and see if this is the "Google Operating System" we've been waiting for

The 'future of computing' is such a broad term. You could see it ten years ago and it's been getting much more clear over time. The web will engulf everything. Life as we know it. Brick and mortar, entertainment, communication, work, school, seeing the doctor. Everything. We live in an amazing time to be able to see it. The tough part will be continuing the move of our lives to the cloud and keeping most of the internet freedoms we see today intact. It's all around us. Google and Comcast shaping net neutrality. Assange and the hacker wars for freedom of information. It's all happening now and we are all in it. We each have a the opurtunity to take part and help shape the future of the web. You know what would make that even easier? A CR-48 Chrome notebook.

The future of computing is a hard shell to crack, in many instances there are a millon possible outcomes, so in many ways the future of computing is hard to realize but with moores law and what we have seen in the past we can form a generalized idea of tye future of computation. First lets recap what we have accomplished, computers were initially designed for complex calculations until the internet arrived. They then developed for some years until we got where we are now, most communication is now through mobile devices. We send sms's emails and other media via our phones. In the future one can expect that most of our communication is through a tablet device, well sized but bigger than the common four inch smartphone of today. These tablets will be the future of computing, with abilities similar to the fastest computers once we unlocj quantum computation and on thin devices, they may even start to resemble sheets of glass because of the clear screens they use. No longer would we have to install a seperate device for taking pictures, the screen will be able to emit and capture light cutting out the camera. All this is only the hardware there is another part to the future of computation and that is software, in the past software was mainly the os and what prigrams came with it along witg other programs you purchase at your local store. Software has not allways been avaliable for download on the internet. Then the internet was created and revolutionized softare consumption (use and purchase), it allowed people to post web documents to the internet and to access files from other computers. Now we are on the initial wave of the web 2.0 revolution and most of the software we used to use on our os is now on the web, like our office suites have now become web apps. The future for software is really the future of the web, everywhere the web goes web apps will follow and eventually we will only be using web applications and not software onre on the os. The future of computation is one of diverse solutions, with two parts the evolution of hardware and the evolution/extinction of software.By @panteravacahamlinmatt212@gmail.com

The future of computers is a future where computers conform to people, not people to computers. Anywhere with any device with any connection you will be able to access what is important to you. Computers will connect us even more than they do today while better protecting us from each other. Computing will not have restrictions that have to be considered now: is your computer fast enough, do you have access to that, etc. Instant access to what you love and need allowing for better environment for all.http://www.google.com/profiles/KyleC32

When we gaze into the future of computing, the best place to start would be looking back at the past. They say that 'history repeats itself'. It would seem strange that this saying would hold true in the technology industry, but bear with me as I me explain: Before the PC revolution began, most companies' computing power was stored in the huge, unfriendly mainframes. To access this data, employees would make use of a dumb terminal, connected to the mainframe via the network. This dumb terminal was unique, in that it didn't have any of its own storage, nor did it have any intensive processing requirement. The reason for this was that everything the user ever needed was stored on the mainframe, and he could access it anytime by simply logging into the mainframe. Now, let's do a quantum leap forward into the twenty-first century and make some comparisons. Simply put, "the cloud" is the new mainframe, and the internet is the new corporate network! The dumb terminal has been replaced with hardware like Google's Cr-48, which relies solely on the cloud for its information! With data taken off our local storage devices, and moved into the cloud, our fears of hardware failure or losing our primary workstation through theft or memory failure, are a thing of the past, and hopefully will never need to be repeated again!Twitter account: onixgrant

In the future I won't have to scrub my hard drive before handing it off to IT. I can grab the nearest piece of hardware from the first person who goes to lunch and leaves their laptop unattended. He probably won't care, because none of his data is available to me. This digital anarchy is my dream, and I hope Chrome OS makes it possible.

Future of computing will be on a device which is not Desktop/Netbook/Laptop/Tablet/Smartphone, but integration of all into one. Also OS/Apps/Platform will be offered as a service like a Mobile Contract with some open standard where people can switch service based on Quality of service. Also I can see more of open standards in all domains instead of propitiatory standards. Also I can see more of enterprise apps build on cloud to reduce cost on Datacenter/Ops/Support and focus on business.

The future of computing means never having to click Ctrl+S every 4 seconds when creating a document. It means never having to reboot to install updates. It means accessing you entire electronic life from any computer, any device, and having the same safe, reliable experience. It means not having to backup backups of backups onto 3 types of "stable" media. The cloud is the future. Chrome OS is the future. I'm ready to surrender my data to the cloud and live free!

The future doesn't exist until we create it. Our imaginings help us prepare for the future, but they don't predict it - they allow us to participate in a group fantasy of what the future might be.

This idea of the computer as a physical window to the conceptual world of the internet will only be the future if we make it so. It's not about what we think, it's about what we do.

Participation is what really drives development, and we participate with our enthusiasm and our money. So go, spread the word about the future as you see it.

When the technology comes out that for you represents how you want the future to be, not just how you think the future will be, support that in some way. If you do those two things, then you are helping to create the future.

Each Chrome OS laptop that gets out there is not just part of the Pilot program. It's not just Google testing their product; it's Google spinning the wheels of enthusiasm. It's Google making their vision of the future a big part of our collective dream.

I have already embraced the Google's model. I have a 50mbps with comcast and have several device connected it...motorola cliq, roku, wii, macbook, laptop, wireless printer, and tmobile at home service. I do not have a tv plan or dvds because i uses netflix, amazon vod, hulu, and itunes for all my media. I believe that is the future of computing...wirelessly, flexible, mobile, secure, and cheaper. I see a future where everyone uses VOD, VOIP, social networking, ebooks, and online storage. A life that I have already embraced

The days of constant and complete interactivity with the web will be here soon. The hardware we use to do this must be so fast and so simple that it becomes transparent as and does not hinder our ability to create or access our data. Chrome OS is launching us toward having the type of computer that will let us be free and always connected at the same time.

The future of computing definitely includes more mobile access to rich technologies. In keeping with the topic of the Cr-48, I envision people using ultraportable laptops with cloud connectivity for daily tasks. In my professional realm as a desktop support specialist, I can see myself carrying a Cr-48 to meetings for taking collaborative notes with the other attendees. Once the meeting is over the notes will be accessible to those which couldn't attend and they can comment on them and seek clarification. After I get back to my desk, I'll open Google Books and finish my reading assignment for my graduate degree that I'm also working on. Once I get to class I'll be able to refer to my reading notes on my phone, since using the laptop during the discussion period is distracting. Another student comments on a different passage which I highlight on the phone and can look into it again once I get back home. At home a friend drops by and wants to show me something interesting. I pass over the Cr-48 and he logs in with his account, gaining access to all of his resources and can pull up the app he wanted to show me. Once he's done he logs out and the laptop reverts back to all of my stuff once I login again.

In an ideal future I will never have to deal with a windows control panel or mac preferences ever again. I will never have to format a hard drive, load an os or set up a network. I will never have to set a path or even think about the file hierarchy,my data will be saved,categorized and backed up seamlessly. This is the future of computing, the computer goes away, becomes smaller less obtrusive and does what we need it to without having to get under the hood as much.I used to be skeptical about the cloud, but have come to see the beauty of it,for instance I'm composing music with Uloops on my Droid. Uloops processes and renders audio from their servers which allows me to do incredible things with my little Droid. It works brilliantly and seamlessly.Luckily the future of computing is on our doorstep and I'm enjoying it .Mike.

The future of computing is a web based environment which updates itself with new features without interruption. Chrome-OS is the future! When I load my computer, 98% of my time is spent using the chrome browser already. Let's take away the Mac vs. PC commercials and move to the web; Have your computer and every computer you log into look the same. Personalized for you! An environment where all users are connected (no limitations) to each other as well as any mobile devices.

2. Interconnectedness - all devices will be interconnected, including your home's lighting and heating systems, refrigerator, oven, entertainment and security systems, utility meters, your automobiles, perhaps even your personal accessories like watches and shoes, etc. The interconnectedness will be so seamless, most people will not know what is a computer and what is not, they will not know where the computing is happening - in the device/appliance or our there in the cloud.

3. Embedded - This is the final frontier of computing. By embedded, I don't mean computing power embedded into appliances and devices. That was already covered in the previous bullet about connectedness. I am referring to computing embedded inside human bodies. We will all be android hybrids able to access the whole Internet with our minds, communicate with others with our minds.

Traditional PCs will be the "command line" of this next generation. No longer will people keep a cluttered desktop with files everywhere. The internet experience will be like a friendly hand guiding you and connecting you to your data/world. The structure and the nuts & bolts are hidden to create an experience that is functional and magical. The Chrome OS Notebook is your ticket to the world. Solid state and zero moving parts means a fast reliable machine that is always connected. The corporate world will also be transformed by this new OS. The Chrome OS Notebook can be setup in a minute and can be lost without compromising the secured data placed in the cloud. This will explode the k-12 educational market. This is the exact type of device schools have been needing. Full laptops and traditional net books have been "shoe horned" into the k-12 1-to-1 space. Now, the Chrome OS Notebook can fill that 1-to-1 need with a fast, reliable, cheap, and easy to setup device. A tech coordinators dream. Tomorrow thanks you, Cr-48 Chrome notebook.

The future is the past. The device held by the user will be intellect terminal type devices with the real storage and computing done on the cloud (formerly mainframe). In the past people saw this as a limitation, but this is mainframe 2.0, we will no longer limited by the local memory and cpu speed. We will have the power of a super computer in our hands.

Throughout our existence, Technology has been the medium in which human thinking, creativity, experimentation, and effort have brought us to immortality. Technology solves problems, makes life easier, and most importantly advances our capabilities as beings far beyond the short-lived unit of a lifetime. Technology will be the key to space travel, and existence on other planets, ad infinitum. When people contribute to Technology in ways that can be translated, used, and extended by future generations, we ensure the future of our species, and we ensure the advancement of Technology. The future of Computing is the mesh which will enable humans to communicate and collaborate in ways that are more advanced than anything we have ever seen or experienced before.

The future of computing is the enabler of humans, and an enabler for the future of Technology as a whole. Computing is about information. And information is the basis for advancement of science and Technology. Since the creation of the Internet, people have been able to connect ideas and research, in a limited capacity, with Technology. The future of computing, by using the Internet as its base, will reach beyond the typical model of computers being standalone devices, to pooling together the power of many single machines into massive, distributed, problem-solving units, and at speeds that have previously been unfathomable.

The only constant is change. And as we embrace change, we will continue to see amazing things take shape in computing. The power for computers to solve the most tragic of life's problems, like curing cancer, diabetes, and other diseases, will be brought forth by power of computing. Deep space travel and relocation will also be made possible by the future of computing.

And finally, given the embrace of the power of computer technology, human existence itself will be able to continue on forever more.

The future of portable computing will take two paths: one involving content consumption and one involving content creation. Smartphones and tablets are ideal for content consumption but are miserable for content creation.

I have always believed a 12-inch netbook is the future of portable content creation. 12 inches hits the sweet spot between a tiny, featherweight 10-inch screen and keyboard and a large, heavyweight 15-inch screen and keyboard.

Myself, I divide my online time between my desktop at work, my desktop at home, my laptop on the road, and my wife’s desktop. I must live in the cloud. I use Google Bookmarks via the Google Toolbar; Google Docs for personal documents; and I use a combination of KeePass and Dropbox for passwords.

It will be interesting to see how Google thinks the port to the cloud should look and operate.

I'm just WOWed (pun not intended) by the game Lords of Ultima at the moment. It is truly revolutionary in terms of game play environment - and its in the cloud, as a Chrome App. I could not imagine such an interface was possible in the browser world.

However - the only remaining hurdle is that of the off-line period. There will always be some places without network coverage - be it wifi or 3,4 or 5g. These could be places out in the wilderness, or even your place of employment that is basically a big concrete bunker that absorbs all signals at any frequency. If apps can be developed that seamlessly switch from online to offline and preserve as much functionality as possible, then I will be ready to reach up into the cloud.

It Started with Consumers - for most users, email is their main cloud application. People are starting to participate in broader cloud services, as they appeal to "cord-cutters" like myself. Email was first...then came backup/storage (Mozy, Carbonite, S3, Dropbox, Sugarsync, etc), feed readers (RSS), messaging (Twitter), pictures/video (Flickr, YouTube), and social networking (Facebook, Myspace). Soon we will see music (Lala acquisition, Pandora, Spotify, Google again) and VOD (Netflix Watch Now, ondemand offerings of TV providers, etc).

Enterprise - enterprise software vendors were in denial about the threat of pure-play SaaS (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FacYAI6DY0). The SOA/XML architectures that came out over the last several years were built for cross-vendor compatibility, not for taking advantage of the cloud/Internet. But now that these guys see the light and are actually losing contracts to pure SaaS products (like Amazon EC2/S3, Salesforce.com and Google Apps) they are adapting. http://www.windowsitpro.com/article/cloud-computing2/The-Rise-of-Cloud-Computing/2.aspx Microsoft calls this the "consumerization of IT". They are taking a half-step though. Oracle talks about "single-tenant" vs "multi-tenant" SaaS architecture, telling its customers they could get the advantages of web-based services but restrict it to internal use. IBM is using terms like "private clouds". And Microsoft is taking .NET to their new Azure platform, where developers can theoretically flip a switch between online and offline. The point is, authentication and security are becoming standard (SSL, HTTPS, 128/256-bit encryption), and computing is elastic (virtualization, remoting, off-the-shelf metered data centers, web servers, bandwidth), so there is *nothing* special about these hybrid platforms. They are identical to consumer versions...and they should be, because at the end of the day we are all just users. http://news.cnet.com/8301-13556_3-10150841-61.html http://www.informationweek.com/cloud-computing/blog/archives/2009/01/theres_no_such.html http://gigaom.com/2010/01/01/on-the-rise-of-hybrid-clouds/

Remaining challenges include compatibility between services, encouraging development to augment your platform, and reaching broad markets. The weapon of choice is the API. http://www.readwriteweb.com/cloud/2010/05/pen-api-madness-the-party-has.php?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+readwriteweb+(ReadWriteWeb)

Of course, I could be wrong http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1062512

The future of computing is in Location Based Services (LBS). Google has done a great job of organizing a multitude of information and making it meaningful and accessible. They have begun to show how things like Google search can be filtered to show even more meaning based upon where you are.

http://www.google.com/profiles/scrapdog

Can you imagine being at home and only seeing your personal docs in Google Docs? Work emails only when you are physically at work? All of this would be automatically.

Google chose the Chrome OS to run on a netbook (over say, a desktop) because of one thing, portability. If you have a device that is portable, you are going to take it places. With Google (and individual devs like myself) providing LBS we can take it to the next level.

The future of computing is the main-streaming and spread of the best of our current technology. While cloud computing is a definite possibility right now, it's still only functionally usable by the top ring of the technologically literate. With the spread of cloud computing, we'll eliminate the clear problems of hard-drive failure and data loss, but we'll also invite new leaps in how we interact with computers. Currently, almost all computers have a constant connection to the global network which is the internet, but many computers are not web-centric, and thus many computer users are neither. While Google apps, Facebook and other web-apps are being embraced by more and more of the population, some disruptive piece of technology will soon push the standard forward. As the iPhone brought the precedent of apps on a smartphone, the Chrome OS Notebook could set a new standard of web computing. Google has the capital and following to change the field, just as it's changing the smartphone field with their Android program. We'll not only see new behaviors in how people use the computers and the web, but also a larger percent of the population using it.

I can't write double or triple compound sentences very well. I learned to speak English in a small town in the Western United States. My ability to write a smooth sounding or smooth written essay is very low. In fact, I received C grades in my University English classes.

What I do know is computers and what the future may be like. I've crashed more computers for my school and work place than I can count, but I've also improved the technology used in those places. Cloud computing is a great concept that will help save hours of frustration, since the ability to lose data from a failed hard drive or electrical shock, or viruses, will be gone. Another method of losing data may appear, but for awhile we will be free from that frustration.

Chrome has the ability for user account control for children, which over time, with Google's knowledge will increase in security. I would like to see the Chrome Notebook/Netbook become a great tool for schools, children, senior citizens, and casual users. They love simplicity, and Chrome can give that to them.

On the flip side, I would like to see Chrome Notebook/Netbook also provide robust applications for hardcore users. I've migrated a lot of my documents to Google Docs since Chrome Apps has made it easier.

The future of computing is a balanced hybrid of cloud computing and traditional desktop computing, where a terminal can offload processes and programs to the cloud to harness its power, and just as easily pull those processes back to its own hardware for offline use. Lighter terminals (like netbooks, and smartphones) will leave everything in the cloud, at all times.

Computing is headed in two directions: the cloud, and stateless. With more and more services moving to the cloud, we are becoming more reliant on the network, much like Sun's old motto "The Network Is The Computer". With the coming advent of memristors, the local computing paradigm will also change. Faster/cheaper/alwayson memory will (should) do away with the "save" button. No more hard drives, no more flash-based hard drives (save for physically transferring data between machines).

There are only two technologies which by all counts should have died, but steadfastedly refuse to do so: The fax machine, and the QWERTY keyboard.

In the near future, netbooks such as Chrome netbook, will be ubiquitous. They will be offered by many providers: Google, Apple, MS, Dell, Asus, Toshiba... and will all offer access to your data from any device, including your phone. These netbooks will work online, as well as offline. Google will have a large share of this market, as a pioneer should.

I think the idea of defining the future of computing is like trying to guess which grain of sand will be the last to fall through the passage of an hourglass. The exponential rate of change makes it virtually impossible to know where things will be five years from now, let alone in some random slice of time called "the future."

Channeling my childhood memories of The Jetsons, I can imagine that the future of computing reshapes and redefines the world in which we work and play far more than we can imagine. Just look at the monumental shift in work environments since computers became light and mobile. (One can not omit the rise of smartphones.)

So, with that, I think (read daydream) that the future of computing is one that is truly disconnected from physical spaces; freeing us up even to live and work literally anywhere in the world and be virtually face-to-face. Many of these paths have already been forged today with the rise of broadband, coupled with small, powerful, efficient chip sets and increased battery life on laptops and smartphones. I imagine that the future of computing will be far more practical than wearable computers and the like. Instead, I think the future of computing is defined more by ubiquity of service. I imagine the computers in the future will include an evolution of battery or power technology that allows users to always be on. The same has to be the case with Internet.

I don't necessarily think the future of computing will be reduced to smartphones. Simply because I think there will always be the need for a larger screen. Even if the physical keyboard is jettisoned for an on-screen option, the idea of a computer in our pocket is already upon us; yet we see the steady demand for something just a touch larger. I suspect that the tablets as we see them today we become more of the norm for computers. Given that trend, the reliance on cloud-based services and storage is even more critical. I'd like to think the physical form of the tablets will become much more sleek, less cumbersome and affordable.

In order for there to be a responsible vision of computers in the future, we have to keep in mind the ability of all segments of the population having access. We are already struggling with a digital divide in the US, and throughout the world. The future of computing must be carried out in a way so that all areas of the world are participants. This can only serve to enrich the experience.

Google appears to have looked down the road a ways with the Cr-48 prototype. How fun would it be to feel like you're testing a little piece of the future right now?

A google chrome notebook would be amazing for me, i am on the computer VERY often and right now i am using one that is mostly used for school use. I am not allowed to do much on it because of restrictions placed by the school. However, I write for a lot of different sites and use all the google services daily. I would thoroughly enjoy creating the articles and using all the google services on my very own cr-48. Getting this would be like Christmas, except it'd be a few days early.

Thanks for giving this opportunity to win a notebook, can't wait til the winner is revealed

I've spent many hours configuring VDI environments ala VMWare and Citrix. Neither platform meets our particular business needs. I see Chrome OS completely replacing the (relatively) long provisioning times and maintenance/upkeep of existing infrastructure with cloud based storage, apps and email. For those still needing some sort of mainframe access in the field, terminal emulators embedded in the browser will more than suffice so that custom legacy applications can still be used.

When password expiration and strength policies can be enforced by sysadmins, Chrome OS and cloud computing will be a viable option and preferred to other solutions for safe, statefull cloud computing. I'm looking forward to these days as the product has been maturing gracefully and so much faster than other vendors vendor solutions that businesses have been presented with.

So far, the cost for Google Apps is competitive with others and should be included in any vendor review. With the convergence of voice, IM, email and docs, Google Apps poises itself to host a powerful toolset for small and large businesses to add to or even replace their existing infrastructure when the time comes to review licensing and service contracts.

It really exploits the client/server infrastructure we have been promised for users and team to be productive and collaborative and bring us all into the next generation of computing.

In my view, the future of computing is where there is universal compatibility and no need for system requirements. No system requirements and universal compatibility would allow for all people to run any application on any platform/OS/hardware, old or new. This would allow people in different economic status to use an application that was not previously accessible to them because they had old equipment. They can still use the application without worrying about the need to upgrade to new equipment. Additionally, this would solve some, not all, of our electronic waste problems as we can continue to use old equipment and just change out the software. Making future computing universally compatible will be difficult as it will require conforming many different regulations and rules of other countries, but in the long run it will allow people not to worry about such and such documents being compatible, and to reduce waste (material, time, space, etc.).I believe this is possible with cloud computing. I believe, currently in the US, the infrastructure is not yet fully developed for a complete cloud computing experience (for everyone). But as time continues to pass, the infrastructure will be ready to accommodate the data inflow/outflow required for a seamless cloud computing experience. I believe societies’ transition to cloud computing will be inevitable such as societies’ transition from regular mail to electronic mail. More and more people will continue to move away from our current computing ways to cloud computing.

Today, PCs basically consist of data, apps, an OS, firmware, and hardware. The future will see each of these components absorbed into the cloud.

Application data is already there, the only data left is computer setup info, which Chrome OS will take care of.

Web 2.0 started cloud apps, and HTML 5 and the chrome web store will end native apps.

When mobile networks will become fully ubiquitous, the entire OS will move to the cloud as the client will only need to encode and decode IO, which will be handled by dedicated hardware (such as GPUs) and firmware.

My life should not be separated from my data. With Google's help, I envision a day where any information I need is a thought away no matter where I am. The day of locally running software and paid upgrades will be a thing of the past. When I purchase the rights to use software, I will always have the latest updates. No local installs. No viruses.

In the future as I see it, I will do a hands-free search for directions while driving my car. I will search for a local mechanic and place a call to them without ever touching a button. My car will detect where I'm going and warn me of traffic up ahead not based on traffic reports, but on data sent from all other cars on the highway.

In the future as I see it, we won't think of "using a computer". We will simply live our lives. Lives enhanced by technology where the lines of real life and virtual life will no longer exist.

The gap between mobile devices and desktop systems is quickly narrowing. As phones and tablets get more powerful, the need for a desktop system is declining. The logical end to this is to have one device that handles voice and video communication, capturing, editing, and sharing photos and videos, document editing, sharing, and music and HD Video playback. All of these tasks can already be completed with both smartphone and desktop systems, but there are certain aspects of these tasks that either the smartphone or the desktop does better. For example, editing videos can be done to an extent on a smartphone or tablet, but not with same amount of options available on a desktop system. However, as mobile devices become more powerful, it will not be necessary to use a desktop for such tasks. When the power of desktop systems and mobile devices becomes essentially equal, there will be little reason to justify keeping the desktop system. The only advantages it will have is a keyboard, and a large screen. The advances in keyboard technology have brought us a long way from the days of pressing the 2 key three times to get the letter 'c.' It's only a matter of time until text entry methods for mobile devices become as efficient as using a full size keyboard. That leaves us with the issue of screen size. Devices like Google TV have opened up a way to wirelessly get video content from a four inch mobile screen onto a large screen. Further development of this kind wireless display would remove screen size as a limiting factor for what is possible with a mobile device.

But what if your TV was also an internet connected device? And what if all of your videos, photos, and music were on a server and not stored in the memory of your mobile device? Then there would be no need to 'wirelessly connect' the phone to the TV, because they would be nothing more than a terminal, each with access to the same applications and data. And what if your car was connected to the internet too and also had access to this same information? Then you could access the map for the road trip you planned and the music playlist you created while you were sitting on your couch. And although it sounds like a science fiction cliche, perhaps your car will even drive itself.

As I look at the new Chrome OS Notebook one thing stands out to me, the Search Key.

The future, is always hard to predict. But one thing is certain that searching will become the most important part of any future interface.

Today, I no longer access a menu on my computer. Instead I rely on Launchy, Gnome Do, DMenu, Google Desktop or whatever other search interface I can find. That is what makes me a productive user, and as other's adopt the search it will continue to be the future of computing.

Personal because your computer should know you. It should know the sites you like to visit, all applicable login information, what you were just working on, what you plan on working on, etc. and it should know all this information while keeping it safe from prying eyes. Ideally this would also include inter-connectivity across a variety of devices: phones, notebooks, tablets, etc.

Mobile because you should always have the option to connect/disconnect at your discretion regardless of wifi-availability & geographic location. There is no need to stay tethered to a physical location thanks to the increased pervasiveness of data connections via wifi and cellular connections.

Instant because we shouldn't have to wait through long loading times or slog through menus to dive into our computing tasks. Get in, get 'er done, and get out.

The Mobile & Instant points really speak to the power of smartphones, which have really become the best computers/cameras/navigation devices because they are always with us, always on (battery-life permitting), and always connected.

In the near future, Internet will be advanced in a way that we will have to invent new technologies to be able to stay connected to it. Among the features we/next generation will enjoy is the Automation of house appliances and having the ability to monitor our usage of energy. Saving the environment will be much more easier when we can have a look at the current status of the planet's vital indicators online and live. We will immediately see the effect of our efforts in using clean energy on the planet.

Cars (which will be linked in to our profiles) will be aware of that effort and will log our milage and other usage data in the purpose of analyzing and coming up with better solutions.

Internet will be affordable (if not free) to all people who have access to a computer. New standards have to be invented to cope up with the rushing demands on the network and ISP's will come up with solutions to bandwidth shortage issues.

We will be able to go to hospitals which know every information that is required for them to provide the best care for us. We will not need to tell them what allergies do we have, what conditions in the past we might have had, so on. All of this data is available to them, and they can contribute to it, so other medical associations can be aware of our progress in the medical term. We will have full access to these data of course, and family members will be able to tell, for example, if two medicines should be used together or not, all done online.

On the financial field, we will be able to go through any bank (even if we don't have an account with) and they will be able to assist us knowing our IBAN and (upon our approval) all of our banking history. That kind of data can make it easier for people to get credit cards, loans, and so on in very short time.

Students will be able to track their performance online, colleges/schools will post their grades and other achievement data directly to their profile.

All of the above will be available to us using a single sign-in account, and the possibilities will not stop there.

People will be able to search all kind of things including: a quote or a line from a movie, a tune from a musical piece, a fragrance or aroma, a taste or any other things that we can not currently describe by words only.

Mobile phones will help build the perfect Google Earth maps with the help of the photos they take, and the coordinates that are saved with each photo. A sophisticated software will detect which angle the photo is taken and combine it with other photos to create a 3D environment of that spot on the virtual earth.

Email will gain new standard features. We will be able to tell if a message is personal or not based on an indicator that tells us the time it took for the sender to compose the message. Also, once an email as forwarded, it will preserve its format across universal computer system all over the world, just like a PDF does.

Cloud computing will enter a new level when we shift all of our stored data to the cloud, regardless of the content or size, because then we will really be able to work from anywhere. Companies will sell Operating System that is based on the cloud. Meaning that we will be able to buy a remote Windows/Mac system that we will be able to access from the cloud using any computer. And we can install programs to that remote system and control it as if it was directly used by us.

In the near future, Internet will be advanced in a way that we will have to invent new technologies to be able to stay connected to it. Among the features we/next generation will enjoy is the Automation of house appliances and having the ability to monitor our usage of energy. Saving the environment will be much more easier when we can have a look at the current status of the planet's vital indicators online and live. We will immediately see the effect of our efforts in using clean energy on the planet.

Cars (which will be linked in to our profiles) will be aware of that effort and will log our milage and other usage data in the purpose of analyzing and coming up with better solutions.

Internet will be affordable (if not free) to all people who have access to a computer. New standards have to be invented to cope up with the rushing demands on the network and ISP's will come up with solutions to bandwidth shortage issues.

We will be able to go to hospitals which know every information that is required for them to provide the best care for us. We will not need to tell them what allergies do we have, what conditions in the past we might have had, so on. All of this data is available to them, and they can contribute to it, so other medical associations can be aware of our progress in the medical term. We will have full access to these data of course, and family members will be able to tell, for example, if two medicines should be used together or not, all done online.

On the financial field, we will be able to go through any bank (even if we don't have an account with) and they will be able to assist us knowing our IBAN and (upon our approval) all of our banking history. That kind of data can make it easier for people to get credit cards, loans, and so on in very short time.

Students will be able to track their performance online, colleges/schools will post their grades and other achievement data directly to their profile.

All of the above will be available to us using a single sign-in account, and the possibilities will not stop there.

People will be able to search all kind of things including: a quote or a line from a movie, a tune from a musical piece, a fragrance or aroma, a taste or any other things that we can not currently describe by words only.

Mobile phones will help build the perfect Google Earth maps with the help of the photos they take, and the coordinates that are saved with each photo. A sophisticated software will detect which angle the photo is taken and combine it with other photos to create a 3D environment of that spot on the virtual earth.

Email will gain new standard features. We will be able to tell if a message is personal or not based on an indicator that tells us the time it took for the sender to compose the message. Also, once an email as forwarded, it will preserve its format across universal computer system all over the world, just like a PDF does.

Operating systems will be installed remotely and we will be able to setup applications on them thus eliminating the need for unique laptops and desktops. Any computer will do. We just need to connect to the cloud based OS which will also have our own storage regardless of the content or size.

The future of computing is much more well-connected devices than we have today, allowing you to use a variety of form factors as is convenient. Smartphones when you're out and about, tablets when you're going for casual use...these are already apparent. But I don't think the cloud and these portable devices will completely replace the traditional laptop/desktop used for heavier computing tasks. Likewise for storage...while things have been moving in the direction of the cloud, you still don't have the space (for free), bandwidth (without paying a lot), or 100% availability to completely replace local storage and access.

I see the future of computing having two categories. The casual user and the professional user. The casual user is a person who wants his information fast and mobile. I think that many of the casual users will be turning to smartphones and netbooks or tablets to do the majority of their computer work. Within the casual user devices then, I think we will see an increase in speech recognition and intuitive operating systems that adjust themselves to each individual users habits and lifestyles. The second group will be professional users. Professional users will still use the full desktop systems for the larger jobs. Where the future for professional users would lie is faster networks and more interconnected systems. Systems that would allow you to access all information much faster and more efficiently. Information would either be stored in servers on location, as done now, or remotely, ie cloud based. The largest barrier to professional growth is proving to business that the newer systems are indeed more cost effective and that it is to the business' benefit to upgrade to newer standards. For computers to really advance however, we will have to see computer hardware being made from newer material then silicon. I believe that we are reaching the end of the possibilities with silicon computer parts. We will have to see a transition to parts made with nanotechnology etc. After parts have been made that do not bottle neck from the BUS speed we will see huge advances in the systems.

The future of computing, especially mobile computing, is all about the cloud. Whether we are on a work station, our personal computer, smart phone, or even if we only have access via a library computer, in this modern age there is very little reason why we should not have access to all the same applications and data across those varying systems. We are a species constantly caught in daily migratory patterns from home to work, to the kid's soccer practice, hopping from one WiFi network to the next, or possibly connecting via cell service provider, to access the web. So why are we tied to desktop operating systems scattered here and there in our lives?

Now enter the diskless cloud computing era ... not just browsers but a whole new potential in operating systems, and the way we think and work. A cloud based operating system that leverages the web to allow us to access all our data and favorite web applications where ever we might be. Just think, no more searching various hard drives on multiple computers, folder after folder, for that one pic of the kids we want to send to grandma. No more clogging up mailboxes with attachments we're sending to a college so that they can revise the big presentation for the big meeting, now we can just send a link. The work is done online, in the cloud from any computer, and we are nearing a point of absolute collaboration in our work as well.

It's not about the hardware, it's not even really about the operating system, it's about the web, the cloud, and the endless ingenuity of web developers around the world. It's all in the browser.

The future of computing will be a computer encapsulated within a device the size of a pen or a quarter. Output/input will be displayed via touch sensitive holographic images. Even further into the future, an implanted chip will handle all communications and those tasks we once deemed computing.

I'll try to keep this short... I have no doubt, just based on technology currently, that Google's CR-48 is the future. However, I doubt that people are savoy enough to use it. My friends say that I live on the internet and according to Google's quiz I do. Still getting my work done, only on the internet, everyday would be a little tricky at times for me. And for someone to believe that everyone or even the majority, will be able to operate soul-ly on the internet is preposterous. Even though, most information is offered through the internet now a days. Seeing Google's idea for the future, makes it easy to see why Google has been buying all of these online sites. Such as Picasa, Picnic, Gmail, soon to have Google +1, Google needs these operations online and online now. They want users to have the ability to access everything of the internet, and to save the information. As an ad company the more information they have about an individual the easier it is to market these ads to individuals. I have no problem with this, and keeping this in mind gives an idea as to why Google wants so many online applications, and a computer that can only access the internet. This is completely possible and would make life way easier. Everything backed up automatically, less vulnerability, being only to access the internet, having computers access only the internet leads to so many big implementations (that I won't even get into now or even possibly hope to see all of), by consumers and developers. It's just the problem of not being here yet. Not every place has WI-FI, and 3G is extremely overpriced for notebooks, so thats not even a viable option. Secondly a lot of the applications/ and online programs Google wants people to use are still in Beta, or even Alpha. There is no way Google can hope to have all of them running smoothly, while trying to develop all of them at the same time. Google needs to slow down and develop these web apps one at a time, making sure they are efficient and allow users to start understanding how they work. Instead of just throwing all of this technology at consumers, hoping they will figure out how to find it, use it, and the BIGGY hoping these users like it. This is a lot for any company to try and take on. But Internet computing is the future, its just not here yet.

My belief is that the future of computing will be in implantable devices. I credit John Scalzi as the inspiration of this idea. As researchers continue to map more of the human brain's neural system it will be possible to electrically interpret the signals sent by the brain. A microcomputer implanted along the spine or in the head could be tied in to various parts of the human brain and provide an instantaneous form of communication and research. Imagine, a machine that could learn your preferences and automatically find information from a future generation internet at the speed of your thoughts. Google is already working on the "solution engine" side of this concept. Given enough time, I definitely see this as the future of computing.

A device that is but a mere window into an ethereal world may indeed handily fulfill our every need, but in adopting that device, we cede ownership of our data, our tools, and our privacy to the roiling, ephemeral clouds on the horizon.

Impervious to drops or overturned glasses, we worry instead about unplanned maintenance. Gone are concerns of disk size, but similarly absent are once-timeless shoeboxes of photographs, found in a dusty attic. Difficult software updates are quickly forgotten, but so too, are memories of using a program after its author had gone out of business. And though our physical contexts may change, we'll never again experience working in an unfamiliar environment.

So as we bid a fond farewell to local data and physical constraints, we abdicate from responsibility for, and ownership of, the very data that increasingly defines who we are, and where we've been.

Though resolving issues of data transience and control may be trivial, doing so would mean a return to the very regime which we're trying so dearly to leave behind. And so the pendulum swings away, relieving some burdens, but sweeping out a void for others to fill.

I see the future of computing as going to account paid subscriptions for almost every service. The Internet which has come about in the last 20 years is still in it's infancy stage just as when the pioneers ventured out to conquer and take up residence in new areas in the United States when it was first formed. The time will come when this infancy stage will be a thing of the past and all computing will be controlled by different companies such as our Internet connection is controlled by Internet Service Providers. We are in the beginning stage of this happening as of now and I see more control coming in the future. The Internet will no longer be free for all.

The future of computing will be in the cloud like we all know, but physically, how will it be? Scientists are doing possible to create physical changing computers, which can be transformed and resized by our hands. Video too small in the cellphone? Is only stored in the computer anyway, but I want a TV sized monitor to see it, so I connect the TV. All of these present problems will be a thing of the past. Because future computing will be manageable and size changing. No more limitations in size. No need to get a cellphone for mobile communication, TV or computer for bigger communication. All in one, with future computing. There is also the possibility of computing in our body with led ink on our skin, another astonishing and real scientific breakthrough.Now that we know how physical computing will be… how about, what can we do in future computing?View, create and edit in the cloud will be the motto of the computer of the future, which seems obvious since future computing will be hardware free. Today, we see that motto closely becoming more real, faster than what imagined. Google is creating the dream of the future computing and it’s making it come true. The most used human senses that enable us to acquire knowledge are the eyes and the ears; Visual and audio senses enable us to learn and know things, from important information, to just entertainment, like gossips or news.Documents, pictures, audio and video compose our daily base of communication; and Google isn’t just allowing us to find and enjoy them easily, but is making sure that we can create and edit them too, in a simplified and revolutionary way. Revolutionary? Yes: For years, since the beginning of computers, we’ve been able to do much and later all of this things. It was limited, because we have been always limited to only see things in the cloud. We watch, read and see in the cloud. Now we are slowly getting the tools of the future. The tools that only future computing can bring. Now this limitation is over. We no longer have to be limited to view and watch videos or pictures, from the news, T.V. or even our friends; but now, we can EDIT them. Edit documents, pictures, AND EVEN VIDEOS in the cloud. Finding and searching is not a big deal now days, communication either; we have Gmail for writing and maintaining video or audio calls (communication as it best, as only technology can offer). Returning to the motto of the future: View, create and edit, how is Google taking part of it? Docs, to view, create and edit text. Youtube even allows you to EDIT videos on the cloud. Picasa also enables the user to edit their images with picnick, on the cloud, with millions of features. And for last, audio; which Google has announced already a plan of bringing music/audio service to the cloud, soon and by fallowing the pattern of every single Google cloud service mentioned before, we can conclude that there will audio editing in the cloud. But this doesn’t end here. Google is also going to bring a GAME cloud service soon, with this, the era of cloud computing will be finally established. All the aspects of communication, viewing, creating and editing in the cloud is finally becoming true. Google is the foundation of cloud computing and once this establishment is done, there will be absolutely nothing that can be done to revolutionize and evolve computing. What can be done is improve them and add new extensions/features to them. The future of computing is CLOUD computing. The Future of computing will be of great impact to the human life and every day task of every individual, no matter age, interests, gender, or beliefs. I see a future where the term “computing” will be obsolete, because computing will become the next component and need of the future person. Its simplicity will make the future person wonder: “What was computing, again?” It lies on the hands of the present the future of computing.The references of the physical changing computing and led ink for skin can be googled or E-mail me. My E-mail is Brozufil @ gmailMy twitter is twitter.com/Brozufil

I wrote a fucking God damn one page essay and when I pasted it said error too fucking large, I've deleted three paragraphs and it took me hours to make, now I'm suppose to summarize it for it to fit here?

I had the same problem anonymous had, it kept saying error too large so I deleted a few paragraphs, hopefully, my first post here (ctrl+F and write Brozufil to find it) contains UNDELETED paragraphs, so that one is the correct one. The others have deleted things I wanted to say :( so dont read those

The future of computing is an open book where we can only make predictions as to where it is heading.

The one constant is change; Users will not need to learn the in's-and-out's of a piece of technology but learn to adapt and understand it's key functions.

I work for a school and have been thinking about my ideal model for a 1:1 school.

Technical ideas for the future:1. Move to a cloud based authentication: This would be easy for student machines which could run a browser based computer but administrative computers would need a to replace the windows logon with a google one (I have previously written a google doc model of this and would love to share)2. Content filtering (which is required by law for schools) would be cloud based, similar to OpenDns but since authentication is cloud based I could get detail user reporting and filtering.

Now for the student:With students one word comes to mind and that is "accessibly". In the future world all students everywhere will have equal access to tools, books and resources. Student-teacher collaboration will move from a dictation of information to a collaboration of information.

My name is Bjorn Behrendt and I thank you for your time. My website is http://www.askbj.net/ and my email is bj@askbj.net.

Alex yes please, I'll post the link to my essay, please delete my previous comments here which contains my incomplete essay due to the obligation to type only 4,000 characters I had to delete a lot of paragraphs.

The future of computing will start with a click and will end in a spam induced whimper. Near Future: Home computers will soon have start up times comparable to an exotic sports car’s 0-60 times and the first “truly functional” $99 laptop will not be given to impoverished children, but sold at Low price-Mart. Not so distant: Spacebook will introduce “My biometrics”, which posts in real time your heart rate, blood pressure and blood glucose levels. Pair™ will buy the rights to the app and sell it as “MeBio” for $39.00 with their MePod Omega. This will spark permanent diagnostic tools to be placed in the body much like the tracking chips you put in your pets. Doctors will track dozens of patients, and eventually medication and diagnosis will be automated.The First person to have over 1 billion friends on Spacebook will be Tara Bacardi. Global “friending” will infect most of the civilized world. People will walk the streets with bar codes on their shirts, so people can use their smart phones to pull up their bio’s and friend them. Dating services will have records of who they have been linked with. Bill boards will sync to facial recognition and produce advertising based on browsing history. The Government quickly steps in to limit the amount of Johnson enlargement and little blue pill ads that can pop up every time Jim walks by in public.Distant Future: After the back in forth between freedom of privacy and freedom of information. Computing goes organic. Using stem cells to meld electronic components into organic structures, such as the ears, eyes and brain computing begins a new synthetic evolution of man. However, having an available search engine in your mind does not make up for true intelligences and thusly schools and universities are adjusted to meet this new generation.

The future of computers is a relative thing, we viewed today’s computing technology completely different from yesterday, but yet there are significant advances all round. In general computers are getting smaller, faster, and in some cases display information in better quality. No longer are we limited to one location, technology has allowed us to go mobile. Instead of desktop computers, limited to location, we have been offered laptops and smart phones. Not only is computer hardware advancing, but software is nonetheless. Software is no longer limited to viewing or creation but real time editing and advanced communications. While both these computing technologies advance the connection between them is being drastically changed. An example of this is the new I7’s, revolutionizing the architect, the way software communicates with hardware. It’s incredible how fast technology is going, and nothing is what it seems to be. Technology moves too fast for us as one person to give a definite future for all.

Thanks for reading my short blob. You can email me at dnxviral@live.com

CUSTOMIZABLE AND SIMPLECUSTOMIZABLE AND SIMPLECUSTOMIZABLE AND SIMPLECUSTOMIZABLE AND SIMPLEIm pretty sure i wont win this but, here goes.when Google first came out, it competed with yahoo, but Google had an advantage. simple. Google is simple. chrome OS is simple. when you give something simple and easy to the roughly simple 300 million people of the US it will be a hit. look at the iphone, its so simple 4 year olds can now operate it. now lets look at the other top competeter the android. the android is CUSTOMIZABLE TO THE MAX. chrome os will be solely CUSTOMIZABLE and SIMPLE. people want to be able to be different not in public, but on their own computer or phone where they are really the only ones who see it. thats where they express themselves. IF chrome os can sastify the needs of being CUSTOMIZABLE and SIMPLE it will be a huge succes, because in order to do that you have to appeal to and think like THE PEOPLE. CUSTOMIZABLE AND SIMPLECUSTOMIZABLE AND SIMPLECUSTOMIZABLE AND SIMPLECUSTOMIZABLE AND SIMPLECUSTOMIZABLE AND SIMPLE

Traditional computers are a liability. They suffer from a myriad of problems: perpetually out-of-date software, prone to attacks by spyware/malware and viruses, and prone to hardware failure. Their main value is providing access to data, but they jeopardize it. They are also overkill for the vast majority of users. Why do we continue living in the past? The future is the Cloud.

The future of computing is easy to follow through the marketing departments and the push of more user-friendly systems. Each and every person who has experienced the way a child reacts to the introduction of a computer can identify with the concept that computers will become more child-oriented as well as maintaining their business-related "professional" appearance. As people become busier with their lives, the need for a device that can accomplish multiple tasks and provide an outlet for creativity for all members of the household is going to grow. Computers are going to become that all-inclusive device that can be passed from parent to child in all ages.

A friend once told me that he is not afraid of death; rather, he would be disappointed if he would not be able to see technology in the years to come. When I look at technology and computing in the future, it goes beyond what my 20/20 vision allows. The idea that the new, computer age youth, is growing up understand the importance of cloud computing and accessible, easily shared documents lends itself to inacknowledgeable amounts of growth in computing in the near future. To say that you can predict the future of computing would be absurd as there are so many developers making their own contributions day in and day out. This constant growth forces technology to expand beyond what one person is able to consume in a reasonable fashion. There is an awesome future for the computer fanatics in all of us and I will be continuously staying on top of these changes as the world of computing is changing faster than I can foreshadow.

First, I'll say that any predictions I make are going to be wrong. But why should I let that stop me?

The future of computing is small and mobile. Computers as we know them are going to continue to get smaller -- even our current phones will seem unwieldy and ridiculous. (Think bag phones from the 80's.) The stumbling block will be the screens--we all want a tremendous display, but don't want to have to carry it. Display tech is going to be a huge push. There will be efforts on rollable, foldable, and projection displays. But the real revolution will be something that, eventually, occurs inside our minds or on our glasses.

The operating system as we know it is already a dinosaur. People won't run operating systems. Chips and servers will run them. That is, we will run OSs on tiny chips inside our systems, and big-time OSs will be run on servers that send content and facilitate actions on our tiny computing devices.

Throughout all of this the only thing that won't go away for a long-long time is the keyboard. We will try lots of different interfaces, but people will still want those keys and the clicking of them as the soundtrack of their computing. Weird.

In my own personal computing, the future is that I will get a Google Chrome notebook given to me by some lovely people who think I'm a swell guy and will use it wisely. Pretty please.

Mobile handset will dominate. Mobile can do the majority of the regular computer can do. Laptop and desktop will still exist, but probably will come in 2nd and 3rd places. Mobile handset is still in its early stages. Smaller, Newer and more powerful handset coming out every a couple months. And we will continue to see that trends continue to rise.

I'm just a regular guy. I love computers. I love Google. I wish I got paid to sign people up for Google services. I'd be able to quit my job. I've spent a lot of my personal time switching people over to Gmail, Calendar, and Voice. Not one of them have switched back. Having the opportunity to test the new Chrome OS computers would allow me, a regular guy, to tell/show everyone I know how amazing it is.

The future of computing is definitely evolving toward smaller, more powerful devices. However, as the network layer becomes faster and more ubiquitous, more work will be offloaded to supercomputers running in the cloud. Many applications that traditionally required a powerful desktop machine will be made available to any device with an Internet connection.

Thin clients will become cheaper and more portable, and battery life will drastically improve since all of the heavy lifting will be performed behind the scenes by computers running in a nearby datacenter.

In much the same way that a person right now can use any telephone to make their phone calls, that same person will be able to pick up any computer and do their computing. The actual device a person choose to use will be largely irrelevant and will chosen based on screen size and mobility. Any device should be able to be paired with any input or output device dynamically expanding its capabilities.

The future of computing will be a bright and exciting future for us all.

In the near future of computing I see the internet being revolutionized not through 3g or 4g or 5g but by the accessibility! Only 1 billion people in the world have internet, yes, a staggering number but how about the other 5,775,235,741 no, you shouldn't need wires that is a thing of the past and routers still fail sometimes we need a revolution! Even though we have continuous changes in browsers, OSes, we still need continuous changes in the very thing it connects to and how we do it. Computing 10 years ago was a mere hobby now for some it has become a lifestyle , even their lifeline computing is now a global economic market and it will continue to be into the beyond.

The future of computing lies in the cloud! This evolution is emphasized by the fact that we're running out of IPv4 addresses. The Internet still undergoes a gigantic growth, which is not only caused by more people getting online, but also because people start to have a lot of different Internet enabled devices. I notice in my personal computer usage that a shift to the cloud is happening right now!

As electrons spin so elegantly around their nucleus, as Moore's law unfolds exponentially in a predictably pure line singing upwards to the sky, we ask ourselves what is to become of our world and the tools we will leave here. A future is as relative as the observer, and in this case it is as grand and drawn-out as we wish it to be.

The future of this very machine, now relaying my words to the net? Dismal. Within the next decade it will likely be eviscerated and bleeding its cadmium innards into the soils of Delhi. For an optimist, the future of computing won't come at the expense of lives in developing nations. For the practical among us, the "future of computing" is redundant, since the future will be computing.

Within our lifetimes we have seen the birth of the hard disk drive, and now as we look into the future we can already smell its death lingering in the advent of the "cloud”. Intelligences, constructed by human hands, are already making their debut into our collective destiny. Having developed beyond their current role of spell-checking and punching search algorithms, A.I. will expectedly be playing more integral roles in our daily lives, giving answers to questions we wouldn't think to ask yet. If you want to look further down the road, cyberization will be the most sensible way to keep up with digitized intelligences. Augmented bodies and minds will provide us with an evolutionary branch in the tree of life that nature could never reach on its own. It is possible that one day there will be no empirical way to distinguish any difference between man and machine. But until we face the day that we look upon our flesh with indifference, keep the words of Buddha in your thoughts: "It is better to travel well than to arrive.”

The future of computing is the past. That is, communication technology will continue to get more local and more social in ways that mirror (yet transform) our non-digital lives. Chrome OS is a deceptively profound step toward such a future. Like cell phones did to landlines, Chrome OS will do to computers: We are no longer tied to a specific hardware/location, our identity and accessibility travels with us and can be accessed anywhere we choose.

As communication technology continues to advance, we will have more opportunity to connect with people locally as well as globally. That is the next step of computing. While the Internet ushered in a new globalization of information, it is now increasingly necessary to adapt that information to individual people and communities. People are getting increasingly sophisticated in sorting and analyzing data, but the tools of computing must increasingly come into play in order for a truly democratic information society. I believe completely cloud-based computing is a step toward that direction. But it remains to be seen how it is augmented by content providers and user infrastructures that enable people to transform basic data into a personalized interface suited to their needs.

I'm excited for Chrome OS, and as a professor of digital media and rhetoric I believe I'm ideally suited to offer insights and feedback on this stage of its development.

In this 600 word essay, I want to talk about the incremental paradigms and market drivers that will transform computing for the next 30 years.

2 years out: There are market drivers that will demand cloud computing to be an integral part of Enterprise/Consumer IT. For the Enterprise, the primary market drivers will be cost and increased productivity. The ability to shift the burden of infrastructure management to a vendor will increasingly become a cost-effective mode of transaction. Service providers will be able to deploy the infrastructure, platform, and application as a service – it will be priced using a perfectly elastic, usage-based model. Similarly, the ability for a worker to be mobile will result in a significant increase in productivity. For consumers, device proliferation and embedded NFC chips will become the norm. The price point for any network-enabled hardware will fall sharply. Consumers will be able to move to any dummy terminal and have their device be instantly personalized through the cloud. Furthermore, this dummy terminal will primarily rely on a web-browser architecture as the core operating system. This architecture will be pervasive, irrespective of the device form factor (smart phones, notebooks, television). Our conceptual segregation of a Public/Private cloud and Enterprise/Consumer IT will rapidly morph.

5-10 years out: 2015 will be the era of online identity management and the secure federation of this data -- across friends, services, applications, transactions, and preferences. Folks will be increasingly concerned about vendor lock-ins and will desire to have clearer definitions around the idea of “ownership” – whether it is in the form of software licensing, or digital management rights. Consumers will demand portability of the purchased content to an alternative vendor with relative simplicity and ease. End-users will have the ability to securely manage & federate their online identities conveniently, which includes the ability to evoke/revoke access to any service instantly, without having those identity attributes be duplicated across vendor data centers. As a result, real-time communications will be an immersive part of all services we use. Additionally, the services cloud, application cloud, information cloud, relationship cloud, and transactions cloud will morph -- all within the online identity management cluster.

10-15 years out: By 2020, the next wave of efficiency will come from programming paradigms, which will enable semantic language recognition on the part of cloud-enabled devices. The average smart phone user will be able to “program” instructions into their device by simply giving commands in their natural language. Because devices are connected to the cloud, they will have the ability to contextually render any natural language into binary code. Fiber optic networks across all homes and industries will become a convenient norm.

15-30 years out: 2040 will be the era of quantum computing. By 2040, human beings will have figured out how to manipulate atomic structures to enable the next computing paradigm. This paradigm will be driven by the “spin” of sub-atomic particles (quarks, electrons, etc) with respect to their position, momentum and charge. With the theory of entanglement as an enabler, service providers will transact data instantly across data centers by changing the spin of the sub-atomic particle. These changes will permeate to other corners of the globe where the data is being retrieved. The last-mile transport may still happen through an advanced wireless communications standard that will be a exponentially faster than 3GPP LTE/WiMAX.

In short, cloud computing is a paradigm that shifts complexity to vendors that specialize in a particular solution better than the traditional vertical integrators. Cloud computing gives consumers and enterprises the power to have super-computing capabilities in the palm of their hands through processing and retrieval of results in a vendor’s data center.

The future of computing will see great growth in the areas of ubiquity, ease of use, and security. We have already seen tremendous growth in the areas of computational speed, available memory, and the miniaturization of computers. These advances have paved the way for society's acceptance and embrace of modern computing devices.

With the rise of smartphones, netbooks, and DVRs we see computers entering new aspects of our lives. This trend towards ubiquity will become more pronounced in the future as computers become integrated with our homes, clothing, and cars. We used to go to a computer to access the Internet – but with ubiquitous computing the Internet will feed us information in discreet and context-appropriate ways wherever we are.

As computing devices surround us in more places, their ease of use will increase. With so many computing devices in our reach, there is no need for all devices to do all things. Their function will be specialized based on their form and location – much like how the iPod specializes in playing audio and the TiVo specializes in recording and playing television.

As the world becomes more connected, users will realize that there is a lot of information about themselves that they only want to share with certain people. Storage and communication encryption will be become standard, and new forms of identity verification will supplement or supplant the use of passwords. Guided setup will enable more users to properly secure their devices and enforce who can modify or use them.

As computing becomes more and more powerful, yet smaller and easier to integrate into all situations, people's concern for privacy issues and simply a generally higher level of technical knowledge will lead them to become more involved in the ways in which computing affects their lives. For example, more people will insist on knowing how websites will use their personal data; if companies prove up to the challenge of keeping data safe, then people may begin to share more data in exchange for a more useful service. Those who today are completely trusting of online services will become more suspicious. Hopefully this will be because of education, but it could also be due to some kind of disastrous event.

As people come to better understand technology, they will be able to use new innovations more fully, because they will know of and appreciate all the many features that go into creating the product. I find Google's ideas in this area particularly interesting: while they have simplified many aspects of "living online", they leave their products sufficiently configurable that more knowledgeable, or simply curious, users are able to tinker. For example, many users may never open Gmail's settings menu, but for those who do many treasures await.

Overall, the future of technology will be one in which computing becomes easier, more natural, and more widespread while the user retains a critical understanding of how devices and services work.

I find it particularly interesting that in the beginning, personal computers were more-so "terminals" to mainframes rather than power-hungry machines that can process work on it's own processor. Now we see that Google is trying to push a new paradigm of computing, where once again, we are going back to the aspect of having a computer serve as a terminal - to the "cloud", or Internet.

How did it turn out to be like this? I believe Moore's Law played a huge role in allowing personal computers to be of an acceptable size (compared to back when computers used to be the size of a room!), and that allowed people to have their own personal computer that they can work on, rather than having to connect to a remote host that they work on. Moore's Law allowed the computing power normally found in larger computers to be accessible through a much more compact device (computers in our phones now).

However, as the number of computer devices an average person carries increases, we begin to realize the problem with having so many computing devices. The different manufacturers and other various proprietary formats, connectors, and extensions causes a huge pain that no one likes to deal with. People are realizing that they want the freedom to access their data anywhere and anytime, regardless of what medium they are accessing their data from. The Internet allows that idea to be possible, and I believe that Google is pushing hard to have it become the new mainstream paradigm of computing.

I would like to say what Google is trying to push right now, with their Chrome OS, is the best way for the future. With the ability to have all your data, if not most, to be stored in the cloud, the convenience of being able to access your data through any device or medium is phenomenal. It is right, however, to question whether one should put all their data in someone else's servers (Google), since the ToS can always change and the amount of trust needed that their data will not be tampered or accessed by unauthorized people. Privacy is probably the biggest concern for this future of cloud computing, and it is something that has to be addressed before cloud computing can ever be mainstream.

Back in July, Conrad Wolfram gave a speech at the TED 2010 conference, in which he discussed how math should be taught in schools with computers. He argued that teachers are wasting their time by trying to teach students how to solve complex problems by hand, because computers are much faster at performing calculations. Instead, students should be taught how to apply mathematical concepts to real-world challenges, to make their studies both more tangible and more practical.

The same can be said for computers. For the last three decades, computing challenges have forced us to waste our time tending to these machines - from managing file systems to emptying recycling bins - just to keep them from breaking down. Oftentimes, the ability to manage a computer is considered an intellectual feat, but it is just as mundane and unsatisfying as working as a plumber or a trash collector.

The future that Google is envisioning for us is one that eschews system management for pure content creation on the Internet. We have already seen this pattern occurring with social media and YouTube - two rudimentary content publication services, which give us just a sample of how interested people are in using online tools for developing and spreading their ideas. Google’s push for more advanced web standards in Chrome OS and the Chrome Web Store will take those capabilities a step further and make productivity tools almost completely platform agnostic.

At that point, no one will have difficulty using a computer and the experience will become universal. The distinction between different types of users - from the computer geeks to the twitterati - will begin to blur as all of their work will be pushed into the same public domain: The Internet.

Some may say that this future is one where privacy is non-existent, but privacy is a concept built around the fear that other individuals will take our property. History tells us that the civilizations which have prospered and thrived have always been built around interpersonal collaboration and resource sharing. Google is simply building a future that will help us achieve it on a whole new level - which should make our computing experiences both more tangible and more practical.

Never has there been a time when civilization has needed to answer this call that isgoing to be the new mantra of the free world... From each according to his CPU powerto each according to your video streaming needs!

Give a man a central processing unit and he can run one (maybe two) apps but ifyou teach a man what a CPU is and why that doesn't matter in the cloud then it isup to him how much content he wants to store and access from anywhere.

Never before could the human race band together like this from any screen. This isgoing to be more significant than when the first cavemen shaped and chiseled a wheelto allow them greater mobility or the invention of the printing press which merelylet people read the Bible on their own and discover their own theological path.

You and only you can decide what the future holds and if computers will weigh youdown or let you be free by off loading the heavy lifting to the big online servers.

Never again will man be tied down to his desk. You know closed Soft companies aregonna run around and desert you. Google Chrome is Open to the World!

Now read the first word in each line and *roll* out the chrome notebook this way >> algerdp@gmail.com

I'm sorry to start my essay by telling you that you're wrong but I'm going to anyways, it's my nature. You're wrong to think about the "Future of Computing". This is about the Future of Living or just The Future. As more and more of our information moves to the cloud we care less and less about computing. In a ecosystem where it doesn't matter where the computation is done we can see the realization of the promises that great authors like William Gibson have written about for decades. An alternate dimension, the cloud, cyberspace, a place beside our world separate but connected. We're seeing the technological penumbra of our world coalesce from the ether. We have created a new dimension along side our own four dimensional world and the ramifications of this have only begun to make themselves known.

Distance, Space, Location they're becoming more and more irrelevant to our social interactions. Our memories approach the asymptote of perfection where all we experience is available to us with perfect recall. These are but a few of the ramifications of our move into the cloud.

When computers disappear into the everyday, then we will know they have arrived. Even now, there is no activity that any ordinary human would call “computing”. And try to find anyone under 35 who “goes online”. The fixation of these phrases on the medium is as retro-futurist as Marshall McCluhan’s “electric” global village. It’s just that we read the news...on our iPad. And then we post a comment. We talk to a friend...by IM in Gchat. And we embed a Youtube clip. We listen to music...uploaded by some kid working out of his basement. And click the Flattr button.

This is just life now, not Life 2.0, a utopian flattening of all borders. Neither is it a beta for Skynet. These concerns with freedom and its limits are old and enduring. But “life now” is life “on the web”. And it’s on the web that we will explore how much this medium really does matter, how it lets us live. Partly this is a question of conscious self-reflection, not least by tech blogs and their commenters. But mostly this is what we will unwittingly determine in the course of doing what we do, which means doing things “on the web”.

And yet, I speak as someone already on the web, to others already there. It’s easy to forget, looking forward, how much what I’m calling “life now” is still restricted to us, the happy enthusiasts. There are others, we all know, who are not so happy about “life now”. These are people who think of “using a computer” as a skill, one they don’t have. And there is nothing I do that comes closer to “computing” than playing expert for them, remedying the headaches of maintenance, so minor to me, on the machine we still in this context must generically call “a computer”. This is the sort of “computing” that I hope has no future. May it pass from the earth and live in the cloud, where the priests of IT can devote themselves to it.

For the rest of us, mere mortals, all we need is the screen and the keyboard and the mouse, the abiding essence of the “desktop”. And then the web, and our busy lives there. Chrome OS is the beginning of the end of the behemoth that we still call “computer”, to which we have made so many sacrifices. This is something worth getting excited about. It isn’t a utopian future, just the many pleasures of today, of doing what we do, extended, expanded, made easier.

Computing is dead, cries the priest in IT. “Computing is dead”, retweet the rest of us, wondering what he even means. That is the future of computing.

But now the prophecies are coming true. I think soon we'll have all our music in the cloud. We're already streaming our movies. We need space for our pictures too. And not just 1 gig. But it's coming. Good things are coming. And it starts with Cr-48.

10-15 years out: By 2020, the next wave of efficiency will come from programming paradigms, which will enable semantic language recognition on the part of cloud-enabled devices. The average smart phone user will be able to “program” instructions into their device by simply giving commands in their natural language. Because devices are connected to the cloud, they will have the ability to contextually render any natural language into binary code. Fiber optic networks across all homes and industries will become a convenient norm.

15-30 years out: 2040 will be the era of quantum computing. By 2040, human beings will have figured out how to manipulate atomic structures to enable the next computing paradigm. This paradigm will be driven by the “spin” of sub-atomic particles (quarks, electrons, etc) with respect to their position, momentum and charge. With the theory of entanglement as an enabler, service providers will transact data instantly across data centers by changing the spin of the sub-atomic particle. These changes will permeate to other corners of the globe where the data is being retrieved. The last-mile transport may still happen through an advanced wireless communications standard that will be a exponentially faster than 3GPP LTE/WiMAX.

In short, cloud computing is a paradigm that shifts complexity to vendors that specialize in a particular solution better than the traditional vertical integrators. Cloud computing gives consumers and enterprises the power to have super-computing capabilities in the palm of their hands through processing and retrieval of results in a vendor’s data center.

I've been saying this for a while now, but I have a very mobile view of the future of computing. I pretty much live out of a bag right now, so space and portability are big concepts.

With developing technology, there is almost no reason for "computers" to remain as big as they are.

Imagine a cell phone, very similar to the one in your pocket now (this story only works if you have a smartphone in your pocket right now). You come home to your desk, and you have the usual keyboard, screen, mouse, speakers... but no tower--that's in your pocket. You slip your phone in a cradle, and everything goes up on the screen, the way we all know how to work. You decide to watch a movie: you go to your TV, slip your phone in the side and voila. In your office, another cradle; the library, simply a public workstation. In your car, you still have all your music, navigation, internet. All your files, all your programs, and your contacts are in your pocket, everywhere you go--you are always connected. For mobile work, a simple laptop, with a flat cradle where the touchpad would normally go (we already have the app, all we need it the hardware).

Everything may not be able to live in the cloud--your way--but it can live in your pocket.

The Cloud is almost here. Cloud computing can take off once there is a reliable Internet cloud. Google Chrome OS, Android, iPhone, etc. have shown that the technology is all there, but there is a bottleneck in the connection. Perhaps 4G...or 5G.

There will be a fight in the next few years with the Facebook idea. The browser has been the Internet "portal" (for lack of a better term)--it runs on the OS to interface between the OS and the Internet. The browser is replacing the OS (in a sense--it is actually combining the OS and the browser), so the browser wars are morphing into OS wars. This leaves a void in the "portal" wars, and Facebook wants to be the next "portal" of choice. There will likely be a few other challengers, but (I hope) the idea of a closed “Facebook Internet” will fall out of favor. Facebook will become more open, possibly following Google's footsteps with a Facebook OS.

The next big revolution in hardware could well be holographic displays. This will take virtual reality and AI to another level. (Think Kinect, Wii, etc., but with a holographic display.) This will eventually combine with the 2D multitouch screen (smartphone) to make essentially a 3D interface.

To make all this possible, multicores will have to be used more efficiently, at the hardware (processor chip) and OS level of course, but also at the mainstream program level. Yes, we will still have local software installed, but it will be primarily a skeleton program making use of the Internet for much of its work (think Google Earth). Somebody will come up with a clever way of easily programming in parallel--i.e. as easy as linear programming is considered now.

Finally, more and more stuff will be connected to the Cloud. Refrigerators, credit cards, cars, door locks will follow the way of cell phones, printers, and electric meters (and, of course, combining and becoming other things) to simplify and complicate everything we do!

Computers today are amazing. They do things and go places far beyond what even their original inventors could have envisioned. Because of this, the possibilities have multiplied exponentially up til now.Looking to the future, I expect computers to continue doing what they have been doing- fill in the gaps necessary to make our daily lives easier, our jobs more efficient, and information more accessible. I also envision these commodities to spread throughout the world at an accelerated pace; a time when users in Africa and America alike have fiber optic internet access, for instance.We will need movers and shakers (like Google) to continue what they have started: innovating, creating, and expanding the possibility horizon. The only way to go is up, we just have to keep flying to get there.

I am a google head. I practically live online. I've been excited that Google is taking the next in the (r)evolution of PCs. I believe that we will see more machines that will follow this trend, whether they be windows or mac based. The future of computing will be in the strength of the cloud. I'm looking forward to getting my hands on a Google OS machine so I can truly understand what I the pro's and con's are for these machines.

the way computers are advancing now, they have a pretty bright future ahead of them. The future computers will probably have the ability to scan your face instead of using a password and will be completely voice activated. You will see a computer in every corner of a house and in cars. Soon enough you will see computers helping control houses and other daily life activities, but not too controlling. Just enough where you can still have people in touch with reality.

Today we carry around devices that are as powerful as our desktops were ten years ago. We have bandwidth that would have been unobtainable to most individuals. These trends show no signs of slowing.

Five years out, wireless connection speed will exceed broadband. Many families will cease having home internet, similar to how many families no longer have home telephones. More and more is already being done through mobile devices instead of desktop computers. The majority of purchases will begin to be completed through mobile devices, beginning to supplant cash and credit cards.

Cell phones and other mobile computing devices will become more powerful due to the increase in bandwidth, utilizing the CPUs and GPUs of machines in the cloud. Storage will be nearly limitless and extremely redundant. Upgrading to new devices will only require signing in; your existing data and preferences will be restored from the cloud.

Ten years out, sensors and processors will be built into most products and even roads. More importantly, they will be linked together, providing massive amounts of data. This data will allow for extremely accurate traffic analysis, home electricity conservation, and even assist in getting ready for work or school in the morning.

Computation will be nearly effortless. It'll be even easier to access knowledge and trivia. Computing through glasses will finally be more feasible, as technology improves enough to fit displays in normal sunglasses. New input methods will allow individuals to search and access vast amounts of information at all times. They will be able to instantly compare prices, allow for nearly instantaneous translation between spoken languages, real time subtitling, and instantly look up movies or music by simply a line or scene.

Twenty years out, computing will cease to be something separate and discrete. It will be integrated in everything. Video displays will be built into contacts. Input will be far more discrete and possibly sublingual or even using an advanced form of EEG. The internet will be a literal extension of your brain.

Self driving cars will have begun to become common. Computing power will be spread across the entire planet. Wireless will be everywhere and speeds that we could only imagine today and holograms will allow for 3D video communication.

The aspects of the future of computing can be seen today. Chrome OS stores its data in the cloud. If you upgrade your machine, your data and preferences come with you. Android is similar.

Through cloud virtualization, we have already begun to see netbooks and other dumb terminals play games and access programs that would never run on their hardware alone. Google has created and tested self-driving cars and their navigation and traffic analysis products will only improve with time. Voice transcription has reach incredible accuracy, as has language translation.

These incredible accomplishments and the current technology in development show that things that would have been considered science fiction ten years ago, are now coming into use. All of this and the existence of companies like Google, Amazon, and Apple, competing with one another and redefining the definition of computing, points towards a great future for technology.

For many years now I have touted the idea of writing all applications in a web centric fashion. I see most stores using some kind of point of sale application, and Doctors and Dentists using a glorified database application to manage their patient information. Most of these applications are written unnecessarily for a single platform; Windows. On many occasions I have taken the time to talk with the users of these systems and ask them how they would like to be able to use their data. All of them have replied with the same basic response "in any way I want to". Some of them had their phones, some had their tablets, some had their Macs. These devices, while perfectly portable in most cases, were unable to interact with this existing data. Not because they were not capable, but because the authors of the applications in question had the narrow vision of a single platform world. Java was supposed to be the answer to this single platform world, but unfortunately it is not nearly as accessible as a web page is. Imagine a world where you can pick up any device that has a browser, and be able to access any of your documents, or data that you require, where ever you may be standing at the moment. Google has seen this future already and has taken tremendous strides to achieve it. I can see a future where not only does your data reside in the cloud, but your applications do too. All of your applications. Imagine writing phone apps in the cloud, driven from your web site. There are companies doing that today. Chrome OS is a step in this direction, but I foresee a future that takes this concept even further. I think that the concept of ubiquitous computing is a very real future. I have my own ideas for this future which I would love to share, but I want to get the patents first ;-) I believe Chrome OS is just a small step in what will prove to be a new revolution in computing.

A computer has become as common of a household appliance as a television. Why should it be any more difficult to operate? Place any television in front of anyone of any age. They know how to operate it and how to navigate to the content they want. The methods in which this device is used is ubiquitous.

Finally we are seeing computers reach the same standardization and elegance. The beauty of the Chrome Notebook is in the philosophy and approach. Place any Chrome OS computer in front of anyone of any age. They know how to operate it and how to navigate to the content they want.

Finally, freedom from implementation details, just using the computer with no boundaries. How could the future of computing be anything else

To say I didn't want this rabidly would be a stretch. Especially today, after both losing a randomly drawn contest on Gizmodo and been pretty much guaranteed I won't win one from Google, I just stumbled upon this all of three seconds ago as a last, desperate attempt. I plead with you, a humble man, for this laptop.It is my dream to work at Google. I'm not just saying that because I want this laptop, or because I hate Apple, etc. I legitimately think Google is the strongest and most forward-thinking company out there. It is pure internet. It leads the future, and I can't think of a better place to work. I'm just getting into the field of computer science, and having an always-connected, lightweight device will be perfect for me.Also, for the token sad story, I will elaborate my denial mentioned above. I've gone a good week without any sight of FedEx, UPS, etc. Today that changed. In the 5pm darkness of December, the UPS truck dimly lit up the street. It drove past, taking over twenty minutes to stop at literally every house besides mine. I stood outside in the cold, desperately hoping beyond reason that inside that truck sat a magical package addressed to me. My eyes followed the truck as it sped up, passing my house like it was no more worth mentioning than some tiny roadkill. I was disappointed, to say the least.Obviously there are many other people commenting on here. Many who read this blog more often than I do (to say I'm a regular would be as harsh a lie as saying I've never been here before), many who are far greater writers than I. Many who have longer entries than mine, sadder entries, more demanding or attractive entries. I understand. I understood not receiving the Cr-48 from Google, and not receiving it from Gizmodo. Such is life. I will not whine, I will not complain. But if, by some chance, I am chosen, I will thank you, and I will not forget you. Giving me this chance alone puts you very highly in my eyes.

The clouds of Chrome is the future of computers.The computers around me are from inferno, they put me in circles, the circles of hell. A cup of tea spilled on my Lenovo notebook caused the full loss of data--photos, movies, and homeworks were gone. To be safe from spills, I bought a Lifebook with a water resistant keyboard (what a mistake). Exactly on the 91 day the laptop became frozen, and after emergency shutdown Vista refused to boot. So the Lifebook is now a Deathbook, and my name was written there.Switching from between computers and moving data around them are like journeys from one circle of hell to another. Photos, videos, and music are on my Macbook because it has iTunes and iLife. Documents must be kept on the Windows machines because I do not have Microsoft Office for Mac. So adding some photos to a presentation puts me in another circle of suffering. I buy movies on Amazon, but Amazon Unbox hates Mac and Linux. Is not that a torture?

But there is a hope right on the Web. No viruses. No losses of data. No worries. No screens of death. Your hard drive is on the clouds. The clouds is your OS and apps. The Web browser is an universal interface to the everything. Computers are connected constantly to the Internet. The clouds of Chrome are going to save us. Amen@jeoparder

Lets see I am an international stundet in an American college who majors are theater and international relations. I am not only concerned to give feedbacks on how Chrome OS can fulfill the needs the needs of average college students but how it fulfills the needs of people whose first language is not English.

The future of computing is not "everything on the cloud" but "everything, everywhere". Storage is getting ridiculously small, cheap, and energy-efficient. And local storage will beat any network for latency and availability. The first thing people will do with new mobile devices will be to press the button that downloads all their movies, ebooks, music, photos, and so on, ready for whenever, network or no. Of course, the cloud will sill have a role to play in providing backup, distributing software, and synchronizing content between devices.

Computing devices of all sorts will continue to proliferate. It won't get quite as ridiculous as the internet-enabled toaster, probably, but if my cell phone notifies my coffee maker that I've pressed snooze, I'll hardly be surprised.

The one place where "more is better" does not apply is to the contents of people's pockets. There's been some talk of cell-phone based payment systems. Apps like Foursquare suggest some alternatives to customer loyalty cards. Cryptographic credentialing systems and remote-controlled locks could have cell phones replacing your ID and keys, too.

Users will have more ways to synchronize configuration between devices, but also control over what aspects of the user-experience are consistent between devices and which are restricted to specific parts of their digital lives. Users will continue to make tradeoffs between security and access to data, between functionality and the potential for distraction, between privacy and unencumbered social interaction. They will continue to make many such choices poorly.

Apple will likely continue to create a huge unified ecosystem for mobile computing. Google will likely continue to try to facilitate the proliferation and (partial) interoperability of many combinations of hardware and software. The old Mac versus PC war has moved on to Apple versus Google in the mobile space, and while I'm not sure exactly how it will pan out, I expect both strategies to stick around long-term. As with computers, so with digital lives: Some want theirs to have an overarching well-coordinated design, some want to cobble theirs together with whichever component seems best for each particular need (so long as those components work well enough together).

The internet is the most capable and broadest platform in existence. Servers allow consumers to do thigns their computers could never handle (i.e. search/catalog) the web. This new and better platform will soon render all other platforms irrelevant, somethign that scares companies like MS or Apple. Nonetheless, this is the best possible move for the consumer.

There are 3 reasons why Google Chrome OS should succeed: 1) Its more secure than previous OSes. A web-based, self-updating OS can instantly stay ahead of the curve. 2) Its as easy to use as a web browser. From setup to browsing, it takes all the headache and maintenance problems out of the hands of the user, making the online experience very smooth. 3) Its the most ambitious project since the original web browser. Its a whole new pparadigm of thinking. The world has been waiting on this since the beginning of the web. Thanks, Google.

Chrome OS: the face of technological innovation. The future will run on the cloud, and Google is leading this charge with its new, inventive OS. After all, "cloud" and "Chrome" both start out with "c"...

Being in charge of IT for Atlantic Kayak Tours, ease of management equals more time to make money running programs. Our staff are spread out over three states where we offer programs. Over the past few years we have been moving most of our computing into the cloud. Using Google Apps as our main tools. My netbook does not have any program installed and is used entirely for web based computing. Small business are ideal for moving it's computing into the the cloud. We don't have a real IT department. Money is always tight. Having Google and others manage the back end is safer and less expensive for a small business. Listening to podcasts and reading all of the mostly negative reviews of Chrome OS, I think they are missing the mark. The average person needs a system which is managed and secured by professionals. Data needs to be accessible anyplace we are and from any device we have access to. Chrome OS sounds like a great solution for many small businesses. It will make our computing more mobile, productive and safer. Saving some money is an extra bonus.www.AtlanticKayakTours.comhttp://www.google.com/profiles/Bill.AKT

Computers have always been a tool to improve and augment our lives. The Internet has given computers a new way to accomplish this task. The shared knowledge that this network supports has forever evolved computing. The Internet is now a community, knowledge and ideas are shared. Battles are fought, friendships made and broken...Almost anything you can imagine can be found on the Internet, and made available to anyone with a computer.

The future of computing will be a continuing evolution of the Internet, further integrating it with our lives. With wireless data signals saturating the airwaves, it's possible to have constant access to the Internet This practically begs to be taken advantage of in new ways.

Chrome OS and cloud computing will allow a mobility not previously thought possible. Having access to personal documents, files, photos, music, etc. from anywhere and any device with an Internet connection is a huge step forward.

Browsing the Internet will be a new experience. You'll no longer have to scour the web for the best price, or bother reading reviews and synopsis for all the new released movies. The information you need, will be available to you, when you need it. Cloud computing will do the work for you.

As chrome OS and cloud computing evolve, the future will allow us to constantly enrich our lives with the knowledge of the Internet available wherever and whenever we need it. The Internet will provide connectivity behind the scenes and everything important to you will be able to communicate with everything and everyone else. The Internet will augment our lives in new and exciting ways. The collective of knowledge and communication merging with your day to day life. The gap between the online world and the offline world will shrink. Forget your wallet at home? No problem, making a purchase is as easy as signing into your Google checkout account.

Right now we're at a important step in this evolution, the first step. What happens now will affect and change what we know about computing. Who wouldn't want to be part of this step, testing it and helping improve what will be the future of computing? I know I would love the opportunity.

The future is NOT having your information tied to one physical device, at one physical location, with the risk of hardware failure or rampant malware. It is the end of updating, with countless dialog boxes and restarting, the time taken insuring you have the most up to date plug-in or program is returned to you.

Systems will be approachable and simple for people of all ages and technical backgrounds. Instead of servicing the machine and software it will be a mere facilitator to the web and getting out of the way of your aunt who wants to share the family photos, your son who wants to watch streaming TV or your Mom who just wants to send an email and discover Social Networking.

No complicated, expensive hardware, just focused, simplified, light hardware and automated software that is always updated, instantly on and always backed up.

When we look at what is ahead of us, to come in the future - and then we look back, to the innovation we have made. Us, human beings. I think that is amazing. That we start off with giant machines that take hours on a simple calculation to come to a global network of computers connected across the world and transferred huge masses of strings of numbers. I only wonder what is to come. We are inventive and productive and driven to be better. To make ourselves better. So let’s do just that, make it better. Working together to make an open interface of the internet. So that such technology can be brought forward in the world. Open and brilliant – because that’s what our history is. Brilliant.

Over the past decade technology has shifted away from the usual forms of computing devices we're accustomed to. The standard operating system has taken a back seat to modern concepts like web-based applications and mobile computing. These advancements have led to the transformation of our current markets. The consumer market is adjusting to deliver better media using products like Apple's iPad and Google TV. In enterprise, cloud computing is offering a new level of security and control for businesses using web applications and specialized data management. These market changes will render our current way of computing obsolete, and change how we see the Internet forever.

The consumer market will change in very amazing ways, offering new levels of convenience, communication and control for users to access media content. Technologies like the iPhone and iPad have already offered simplistic controls that even a toddler can navigate through. Other web-based applications provide additional services, such as translating speech into other languages or text. The Internet has also enabled people to share information about where they are, what they like and what they believe using social media tools like Facebook or Twitter. On top of that, users have begun to expect more from their content. Products like Netflix and iTunes give users unprecedented control over content, moving content providers away from DRM and rental paradigms of old. Other products like Google TV move Internet content off the computer and onto the big screen, prompting content providers to ask themselves how much control they have over the channels of distribution. As these technological advances continue, consumer devices will push these channels further to offer complete user experiences. While user experiences become more portable and more robust, the need for the desktop computer will disappear.

The enterprise market will adjust in the opposite manner, with increased data analysis, interoperability and control driving for a more confined and managed user experience. In a world where government data is exposed through Internet sites like Wikileaks, and private chatter is made public through anonymous sources, businesses will see a need to lock down on their corporate information in unprecedented ways. Industries can control their content by managing it through internal web applications and services. These web applications can then be audited and analyzed to understand which users access which content. An additional benefit to migrating to web applications is that any device can potentially connect to the application, and provide the user with a consistent user experience. This increasing interoperability within a network. Finally, Chrome OS provides a closed environment for business use, sandboxing out malware, and building in security through its booting process. As businesses adopt these controlled experiences, network storage will be preferred over peripheral devices. As these end user machines become more simplified and inexpensive, tablets and lean netbooks become a more cost-effective solution than overpowered laptops and desktops.

Both of these markets are reaching for the same goal of providing a better experience for their clients. The consumer markets want the ability to go anywhere and have the world in our pocket, giving us easy access to our friends and content. The enterprise markets want to keep its data maintained and protected from outsiders, since an industry is nothing without its data. With both concepts, the computer as we know it is being marginalized in favor of better experiences and better oversight. In ten years, today's clunky computer will be a hobby for enthusiasts compared to the lightweight multipurpose machines of tomorrow.

There are two components of computation which are of practical and theoretical interest: what can we compute, and how complex is the computation? The complexity of a computation is a measure of the amount of time and space required to perform a given computation. For example, building a house is more complex a task than building a gingerbread house because it takes more time and space to build a real house than it does one made of gingerbread (and a real house is not nearly as delicious as its gingerbread counterpart). From a theoretical and practical perspective it is desirable to both maximize the number of computable things and minimize the complexity of any given computation so that we can solve the largest number of problems in the smallest amount of time and space. Thus the future of computation is the theoretical and practical realization of the upper bound on computability and lower bound on complexity. In other words, the future of computing is one where computers solve more problems in less time and space than they do today. In itself this statement is not profound, as it seems to follow immediately from common sense, but a detailed investigation of the limits of computability and complexity on the practical and theoretical fronts of computing reveals a much more exciting and enticing future.

Theoretical considerations of computability and complexity answer the question ``What types of things can or can not be computed and how quickly can the computations be performed?” using formal mathematical models. Computations are defined using mathematical symbols and rules which somehow relate to our vague notions of what is or is not a computation. Vaguely we might think of a computation as a list of actions taken in order to complete some task or solve some problem. For example, an algorithm for opening a door with a handle is to first turn the handle and then push forward (unless there happens to be a sign on the door that says ``pull to open” in which case pushing will just cause you a great deal of frustration and public humiliation). A precise mathematical statement may be that such-and-such a computation can be modeled by an abstract one-tape turning machine having a finite set of state symbols, one of which is the initial state and a subset of which is the halting states, a non-empty set of tape symbols containing only infinitely many occurrences of a blank symbol and a subset of input symbols, and a transition function from the set of ordered pairs the first members of which are from the set of state symbols without the halting symbols, and the second members of which are from the set of tape symbols to the set of ordered triples the first members of which are from the set of state symbols, the second members of which are from the set of tape symbols, and the third members of which indicate either a L shift or a R shift. That such a mathematical definition captures the vague notion of computations described above is by no means obvious but represents the difficulty of stating precisely what one means when they say such-and-such is or is not a computation.

(continued in next post, or herehttps://docs.google.com/document/d/1261SRrt3zC7knScX9AKaI9_aaC6dTfbGAUODzTNs1tA/edit?hl=en&authkey=CICikq8E)http://www.google.com/profiles/JMeuser

(continued from previous post)So, theoretical questions of computability become questions of what mathematical definitions correctly capture our vague notions of what is or is not a computation. In addition, the creation of such precise mathematical definitions of computability propels our understanding of what is or is not computable beyond the boundaries set by our vague intuitions. In fact, problems of theoretical computability have expanded into related to problems in the philosophy of mind, psychology, and the foundations of mathematics. Such questions as ``Can computers think?”, ``Are thoughts computations?”, and ``What types of mathematical propositions can a computer prove?” emerge with greater clarity as our theoretical knowledge of computability advances. Answers to these and related questions in mathematics, philosophy, and science lurk in the haze of the distant future. As the practical tools for computing today push our imagination of what they can compute tomorrow further into the unknown answers to these questions become more distinct and tangible. Thus the future of theoretical computability is one of enlarged perspective and deeper understanding of what precisely is or is not a computation.

The theoretical component of computational complexity is also mathematical in nature. We say that two computations are of the same complexity if they require a proportional amount of time and space to complete their computation on all but finitely many sizes of inputs. The class of all computations which are the same complexity of a given computation is called the complexity class of the computation. The problems of importance to the theoretical component of computation complexity are those required to classify computations into their respective complexity classes. It is a surprising and somewhat unsettling fact that there exist problems whose computational solutions seem obvious, but can not easily be classified in their complexity class. The future of theoretical computational complexity is the complete classification and characterization of all complexity classes describable via our mathematical models of computability.

The practical perspective on computation which concerns the immediate future is that of the end-user. The average cat owning end-user might ask the following questions: ``How many pictures of my cat can I download to my computer before it explodes?”, ``While sky diving and falling at approximately 115mph can I find a picture of my cat I took 3 years ago and share it with my 6 friends before I reach 2,000 feet (above ground level) and have to deploy my parachute?”, and ``Can I prove to my neighbor that my cat is the most beautiful cat on the Internet?” The first question is one of space complexity: how much space is needed to store cat pictures? The second question is one of time complexity: how long does it take to search, find, and share cat pictures (while plummeting towards earth)? The third is one of computability: is it possible to compute how beautiful a cat is? For the end-user, the problem of space complexity is completely solved. Services such as Google Docs with Google Storage allow one to upload a practically unlimited number of files of any type to one’s Google Docs account without requiring anything more than a connection to the Internet and a small monthly fee. This means that, to the end-user, when it comes to the space complexity of any computation: the future is now and forever. It is for this reason that Apple has invested a billion dollars in data centers.

(continued in next post, or herehttps://docs.google.com/document/d/1261SRrt3zC7knScX9AKaI9_aaC6dTfbGAUODzTNs1tA/edit?hl=en&authkey=CICikq8E)http://www.google.com/profiles/JMeuser

(continued from previous post)Thus the great burden of practical computation is the minimization of end-users’ computational time complexity. To the end-user the time complexity of a task is a measure of the amount of time between the desire to compute and the completion of the computation. The example above of searching for and sharing cat pictures while parachuting is hyperbolic, but captures the seemingly outlandish nature of our computational desires: we want to do anything anywhere and at any time. The single goal of minimizing the end-user time complexity of a computation is what drives Google and its success. Search is a mere consequence of what has become their primary goal: speed. As an example, consider the end-user time complexity of computing the definition of a word one hundred years ago to today. One hundred years ago, an end user might desire to define a word, note it on paper, visit a library the following weekend, search for the word in the library’s dictionary by flipping imprecisely through the alphabet until finally, a whole week later, they have complete the desired computation. Today, one can press a button on their Android phone, speak ``define portmanteau” and, in a few seconds, complete the desired computation.

With Google Chrome, Google Chrome OS, search, GMail, docs, and various other products Google is pushing hard on the lower bound of end-user time complexity. The future is faster, speedier, quicker. The primary hurdle to minimizing end-user time complexity is the availability of devices which are capable of completing all possible computations an end-user might desire at any given moment. It is for this reason that Google has created Google Chrome OS. By moving computational services to the Internet, or the ``cloud,” Google has reduced the problem of end-user computational complexity to the following simpler problem: how quickly can the end user access a Google Chrome OS device connected to the Internet? Thus, in the United States the lower bound on end-user time complexity is the amount of time it takes to open the lid of their Google Chrome OS device.

Full Essay:https://docs.google.com/document/d/1261SRrt3zC7knScX9AKaI9_aaC6dTfbGAUODzTNs1tA/edit?hl=en&authkey=CICikq8E)

There are two components of computation which are of practical and theoretical interest: what can we compute, and how complex is the computation? The complexity of a computation is a measure of the amount of time and space required to perform a given computation. For example, building a house is more complex a task than building a gingerbread house because it takes more time and space to build a real house than it does one made of gingerbread (and a real house is not nearly as delicious as its gingerbread counterpart). From a theoretical and practical perspective it is desirable to both maximize the number of computable things and minimize the complexity of any given computation so that we can solve the largest number of problems in the smallest amount of time and space. Thus the future of computation is the theoretical and practical realization of the upper bound on computability and lower bound on complexity. In other words, the future of computing is one where computers solve more problems in less time and space than they do today. In itself this statement is not profound, as it seems to follow immediately from common sense, but a detailed investigation of the limits of computability and complexity on the practical and theoretical fronts of computing reveals a much more exciting and enticing future.

Theoretical considerations of computability and complexity answer the question ``What types of things can or can not be computed and how quickly can the computations be performed?” using formal mathematical models. Computations are defined using mathematical symbols and rules which somehow relate to our vague notions of what is or is not a computation. Vaguely we might think of a computation as a list of actions taken in order to complete some task or solve some problem. For example, an algorithm for opening a door with a handle is to first turn the handle and then push forward (unless there happens to be a sign on the door that says ``pull to open” in which case pushing will just cause you a great deal of frustration and public humiliation). A precise mathematical statement may be that such-and-such a computation can be modeled by an abstract one-tape turning machine having a finite set of state symbols, one of which is the initial state and a subset of which is the halting states, a non-empty set of tape symbols containing only infinitely many occurrences of a blank symbol and a subset of input symbols, and a transition function from the set of ordered pairs the first members of which are from the set of state symbols without the halting symbols, and the second members of which are from the set of tape symbols to the set of ordered triples the first members of which are from the set of state symbols, the second members of which are from the set of tape symbols, and the third members of which indicate either a L shift or a R shift. That such a mathematical definition captures the vague notion of computations described above is by no means obvious but represents the difficulty of stating precisely what one means when they say such-and-such is or is not a computation.

In the not so distant future I can see myself starting my work in one country and finishing it in another, and all this will be done without having to carry a computer with me. There will be user-accessible computer stations everywhere in the world and to continue working on the work that you may have started in the U.S.A. all you have to do is enter your username and password and finish it in Australia. The future of computing is Chrome OS.

In the next few years we will see a sharp increase in embedded computing capabilites. Embedded linux will enable us to control our home thermostat, music and electtricity usage all from a remote location. This technology is already present, but will be made more available to the general public. Also, wearable computing will become a hot trend soon. Like post twitter feeds from the sleeve of your North Face jacket, check facebook updates on your watch, and listen to mp3's from your winter hat.

Google is right on the money with their concept of web based computing. We already use apps for nearly every facet of our computer experiences - music is listened to online in apps such as last.fm, Pandora or the vast library of music on demand with Grooveshark. Television and movies are easily obtainable online with Netflix and Hulu, both of these considered by the younger generations as much for cost efficient and convenient than traditional cable television. We send email online, connect with people - the entire experience of computers is online in this modern age. This is where the future of computing lies. Because while some need the traditional operating experience, the vast majority would be perfectly content with an affordable, fast and easy to use alternative such as the Chrome OS. Not to mention, while personal and external storage has taken leaps and bounds in the last few years (as has the whole of computing), we personally can never have as much storage as Google does as a network. Imagine infinite storage, no malware, no confusion. Herein lies the future of computing, in web based operating systems.

I believe future of computing is tightly related to mobile company and wireless data transferring. Right now, Samsung Galaxy Tab is competing Apple's iPad and this competition is not only about Operating Systems and hardware performance, but the mobile companies that support the data services for those products. And, personally, I like Galaxy Tab to win it, not because of its supporting companies, but because of its Android! There will be a time, very soon, that mobile companies only sell the "data plan" and "Talk" and "Text" join the telegraph technology in the history!

The arc of progress in computing and the infrastructure that supports it bends towards speed, capacity, and ubiquity in proportional measure. True ubiquity and complete availability of computing resources requires that our digital persona and resources be decoupled from our devices.

There will be political and cultural upheavals as societies deal with the privacy ramifications as use of this technology moves from "interesting and fun" to "convenient" to "required to do business". There will be have and have-nots, as there always is. I predict more upheaval in America than in third-world countries. Why? Contrast the increasing trends in America towards conservatism and isolation with the now ubiquitous use of cell phones in places like, say, Cameroon. If the future is not "wired", but "wireless", there will be far less infrastructure lag in third-world countries. Soon, of not now, there will be a generation that has had mobile access throughout their lives.

Personally, I can't wait for a usable HUD integrated with my contact lenses, with the data manipulated by sub-vocal voice commands and muscle twitches. And, my love of the printed page makes me conflicted when I consider Vernor Vinge's vision of the digitization of libraries by physically shredding the books and putting the pieces back together digitally.

I'm having extreme difficulty seeing cloud-only computing taking off. Apple tried it with the first iterations of the iPhone - no local apps, only web-apps. The user-base revolted, jailbroke, and installed their own. Finally Apple relented (as I'm sure they were wont to do eventually anyway) and the App store was born.

I see how the Chrome app store is trying to bridge this gap, but I'm having great difficulty envisioning myself using this kind of computer in my daily routine, including development.

That said - I absolutely LOVE the idea of having everything constantly 'backed up' in the cloud. I LOVE the idea that everything I do is NOT tied directly to the hardware. I LOVE how potentially fast everything can be - esp. if it's all virtualized and running in the cloud on much more powerful machines.

Therefore - I seek the opportunity to implement one of these CR-48 machines into my workflow. I want to be wrong. I want the Chrome OS to rock my world. I want the future Google sees to be a bright and shiny one - but I just can't do it until I've got my hands on a device the touts this future in all its glory and I can be as (or more?) effective a developer, designer and user because of it.

When we all have various sized tablets (one-hand, two-hand, desktop, and wall) that allow us to move our workspace wherever we are, and the heavy computing is done at a centralized hub and then sent to our workspace, then we will be in the future. :)

The future is about ubiquitous computing intelligence. This means more than just microwaves that can twitter and web enabled Christmas tree lights. Instead the future will include devices integrated and working seamlessly. Just as most modern cars contain hundreds of microprocessors that most people have never thought about and would be hard pressed to identify, they are still there and together they provide for a safer, more efficient, and more enjoyable journey than would be possible otherwise. When an input is given by the driver all relevant components work together to create the desired output. This involves significant quantities of information that is transferred and evaluated providing real time feedback that is both seamless and natural.

What will this look like? A system of dissimilar components that intelligently collaborate with us on every aspect of our lives. In the home it could be a traffic accident on the way to work that is noticed and causes an alarm clock and a coffee maker to start 20 minutes earlier, or a thermostat that coordinates the temperature with your calendar and communicates to the power utility to negotiate better rates.

On the web it is this and all required information brought to you, aggregated and evaluated to allow for better informed decisions made quickly and the results communicated immediately to all appropriately affected means. In addition, it should provide this power form anywhere to anyone at any time. This is why Chrome OS when partnered with Google powerfully begins a major step in separating computing from hardware, and as with the car all the pieces are there, but behind the scenes working together to make things better.

It seems to me that predicting the future of computing can be futile. With every passing minute someone, somewhere is experimenting with new ideas, tinkering with old ones, or stumbling upon a previously unknown or un-thought of method. So while we may have an idea of the next step in computing, we cannot say, definitively, what the future holds beyond that step.

Concerning the next step, it seems we are on the verge of launching into the cloud. This journey into the cloud could be considered the urbanization of technology. The computer I am using now is similar to a small, independent farm with all of its own programs, storage and hardware capabilities. However, to step into the cloud would be to join a massive world-computer where one only needs a connection to access an overwhelming amount of data, programs, and storage.

No longer will a person be tied down by their ability to afford the newest software or hardware. As long as one can connect, it can be done. The effects of cloud computing will be far beyond what we can reasonably deduce. Urbanization has led to virtually every great discovery in science, philosophy, engineering, politics, and beyond. I can only imagine what the effects of the urbanization of computing will be.

Will it bring forth the technological renaissance? Will our advances in technology grow in ways that science fiction hasn't even imagined? Will someone create the all in one breadmaker/toaster that connects to the cloud and no matter where I am there will always be fresh toast made to match my own specifications?

Outside of the collaboration, access, and innovation that will be sparked because of cloud computing, I can only make blind guesses as to the future of computing. As long as a spirit of integrity, innovation and productivity is maintained, the future looks pretty awesome.

there is no future without computers. the future i imagine in never having to wait for a system to reboot and always been available for the next task. Soon laptops and desktops will be in the past and the only form will be in the palm of your hand as computers progress you should be able to go cheaper and go faster. The innovation that i see is a network that allows users to spend less time searching and more time enjoying. Because as humans we are naturally embedded to communicate with one another its in our nature to want to communicate in text and speech form but instead most mediums have caused us to divert from communicating and communicating less in person. what is the point in advancing and creating over complicated computer networks if the human aspect of it is lost so a better way to communicate would be in person. computers in the future will be used less because of the speed and the advancement of instant media. IN the future i imagine instead of electricity a computer that runs on chemical connection like humans because these would be a faster medium creating a more complex system that in fact work faster and more efficient and require less space. maybe some day a google robot or a google car that can efficiently drive its self. I only hope these advancements would not cause more anguish to humanity since as the advancement of technology progresses so do weapons and ways to harm ourselves. SO we can only hope future generations use these tools properly to manage energy and resources for the greater good.

Ubiquitous = the future of computing. I want to be anywhere in the world and have the SAME exact access to all of my documents and information. I will be a recent graduate (in 1 week!), entering the business world, and an avid home computer user. Explain to me why I need to access three (if not more) different environments from all of these points of access?With the recent addition of a Citrix environment at my workplace, my problems has somewhat been solved. There is still the issue of having a VPN connection to have one central machine to operate on. Why can I not keep all of my documents and important information in the CLOUD?! I dream of having ALL access to ALL of my important stuff from ALL devices, no matter where I am or what my connection is. My blackberry should be equal to my netbook which should be equal to my tablet which should be equal to my environment at my work place. Ubiquitous = blackberry access = netbook access = laptop access = desktop access = tablet access = game system access = TV access = the future of cloud computer, or one central environment for ease of access.

The future of computing is expected to expand more each year. Specifically smart phones will be the number one way to access the internet. The devices are hand help they can go anywhere and also usually have continuous access to the internet via 3g, or wifi and even 4g. I believe desktops will continue to be sold for business where the need exist and soon smart phones and touch screen tablets like the Ipad will dominate the industry instead of notebook pc’s. Internet based computing will soon dominate industry.

The personal computing revolution is rapidly progressing into its end days, signalling both the end of a golden era and the beginning of a platinum one, so to speak. That is because what the future of computing holds is a departure from the concept of "personal" that has ruled the market for years.

"So then what?" you ask, with a devious smile, "Singularity? The Matrix? Communism!?" To which the answer is a resounding "Maybe?"

It is a given that hardware and data transmission will constantly improve from today's "super-fast" speeds to "super-crazy-amazing-mind-blowing-ly-fast" speeds. So the real innovation that nobody realizes they NEED is a little thing called The Cloud. Any computer in the world will be an access point to your data, a portal into your account and your network. All you'll need is a password, fingerprint -- or identity disk. With the aforementioned "faster-than-I-broke-my-Motorola-Razr" speeds, everything will be nearly instant. Web apps will perform well enough to supplement (but probably never fully replace) native applications. Or, in the case of browser-based systems, web apps -will- be native!

In this way, computers will be personal no longer. It's even possible each user could pick their preferred OS from a drop-down menu, like today's themes for Chrome or Firefox. And those OS's would follow you wherever you logged in! This would of course be difficult unless hardware was more standardized, but this is the future we're talking about! Hoverboards by 2013!

Essentially, I believe the next big thing is not some earth-shattering new interface (á la Minority Report), but how our information is stored, shared, and accessed. The PC (Personal Computer) is dying, and the era of the CC (Cloud Computer) is just preparing for take off.

The web has promised platform neurality since the coming of Java in the mid nineties. Since then we have seen this convergence in fits and starts with ground-up movements like mp3's displacement of physical media for music--assisted by the development of the iPod but succeeding in spite of that device and its limitations.

The web has developed quickly from a curiosity to a source of entertainment and learning to someplace where everyday work can get done, without your hardware getting in the way (unless you're mashing your fingers into an iPhone virtual keyboard!).

We have also seen examples of "server-side computing," and its strong advantages and disadvantages. However, the greatest promise of this concept is now manifest in the Chrome OS from Google and its centering on the web and a browser as the focus.

Hardware can finally be irrelevant, as it was supposed to be. As it was promised to us so long ago. Our experience of the internet and its full promise can be delivered seamlessly, without any one company or platform coloring that experience. And it's midwifed by the plain search engine that became its own verb.

Future of computing has several aspects in which it would be similar to previous approach and different from traditional approach. Similarity like we are going back to early days when we had the high processing servers which were attached to the dumb teletype terminal (tty). These tty had a console for user input and server did the processing for the user. Now we have the similar architecture we have huge clouds and data centers. We can connect them through our browser, Android platform, Chromium OS which provided interface for request. But we are using different approach on the other electronic devices than traditional. We are bridging the gap between the non-computer electronic devices and computer. Like gap between mobile devices and computers is lessening. We see major providers like Google, Windows and Apple developing same OS for both platforms. We have devices like eBooks reader, netbook etc which runs on same OS and comparable hardware but have different interface viz eink, LCD. This also lead us to interesting observation in future most of the digital devices would be computerized and we might have same OS on all the hardware. It appears that future of computing would include the good lessons learned from past and some innovation for the future.

The future of computing will not be in a laptop, or a phone, or a pad - it won't even be "wearable," per se. It will be embedded - heads-up displays on glasses or better yet, retinal implants. Voices "whispering" real-time info in your ear or directly to your audio nerves. Tactile feedback via sensory implants. Speech recognition? Forget it - how 'bout "sub-vocalization recognition?"

As you can tell, I'm a sci-fi/cyberpunk believer. And all of this will be possible because of "the cloud" v10.0, because even with all the advances we'll see in materials engineering, it will be easier to keep all the computing power "off-body," with our senses being I/O devices not only for our brain, but now for our "augmented persona" as well.

As I envision it, the future of computing will rely totally on a global network, either the Internet is upgraded, or something better will replace it. The whole system will be unified so that we don't even have to carry our own computers. All we need is a single ID card (banking, social security, and networking) that once sliced into any computer (accompanied with some kind of biometric verification) will give us our own personalized workspace.

I expect Future of Computing will have quantum leap in Web search technology. Future computing will relate words to human experiences, and use a large collection of advanced algorithms and an enormous amount of computing power and provide correct web searching answer.http://twitter.com/jagawinsjagawins@gmail.com

In the 70's and 80's, BBSes were the rage with computer enthusiasts. You needed a computer, a modem, a terminal program, and a friend to give you a few phone numbers to try. In a sense, this was the early days of cloud computing. You would use a thin-client to connect to a BBS and there you would find games, read your electronic messages from other users, participate in forums, real-time chat, and find software and other files to download. As modem speeds increased, new technologies emerged, and terminal emulators improved.

In the 90's, this concept started being replaced by the World Wide Web. The terminal application were replaced by web browsers, while BBSes were replaced by websites. As a result, the early days of cloud computing were given an upgrade. Web browsers were now much more capable than terminal programs and broadband was now overtaking slow dial-up connections.

Today, with Chrome OS, cloud computing is being given yet another upgrade. Asynchronous technologies such as that which is used in AJAX, the increasing browser capabilities through HTML5, and the improvements in JavaScript speed in V8 have given web applications the status of full computer programs. Now, even complex 3D applications are possible, something which was only being experimented with in the 90's and would be unheard of in the days of BBSes.

There are still many more decades to go with this story. As offline storage features of HTML5 are utilized by more web applications, the lines between installed programs and web applications will be blurred. With the eventual proliferation of Native Client applications the lines between native programs and web applications will be blurred even further. History has shown us that no matter how thin the client is, there will still be a desire to beef up hardware capabilities, making the client less "thin". Every time this shift happens, people raise their expectations of what computers should be capable of. Eventually, cloud-based technologies catch-up and take advantage of this improved hardware, and even more power is given back to the cloud.

The future holds many more possibilities for upgrades in the cloud computing saga. Products from grocery stores might be identified visually by a camera installed in pantries and refrigerators. As this data is sent back to the cloud, you might get regular reminders about when your milk is about to expire, when it is time to throw away the left-overs, or if you are affected by a recent recall of spinach or meat. Toasters could automatically identify what type of item is being placed into the toaster (bread, a pastry, or a waffle) and cook it to your personal preference, whether it be a toaster at your home, or in the break room at the office. Eventually, houses could be automatically build with technologies such as Ethernet jacks at every electrical outlet, wireless access points installed with every light fixture, etc... Having a connection to the Internet will become as ubiquitous as having electricity or running water. As more and more of our lives are managed through computer technologies, more and more information will exist in the cloud, increasing the possibilities for more advanced cloud-based services that are difficult to fathom.

Obviously, there is a certain amount of concern about how much information is "out there", but this has always been a problem for mankind to deal with. Privacy will be important, as will be security. History tells us, however, that the general public will embrace these technologies and advance them further. Every decade brings a new upgrade to cloud computing, distancing each generation further from how computers had been used in previous generations. Many tasks we perform today, on a daily basis, will eventually be automated, and we will wonder how we ever lived before. Our children's children will wonder why we ever needed to program a VCR, or even install a DVR which was separate from the television. Or, they may even wonder what a television was.

The web has promised platform neurality since the coming of Java in the mid nineties. Since then we have seen this convergence in fits and starts with ground-up movements like mp3's displacement of physical media for music--assisted by the development of the iPod but succeeding in spite of that device and its limitations.

The web has developed quickly from a curiosity to a source of entertainment and learning to someplace where everyday work can get done, without your hardware getting in the way (unless you're mashing your fingers into an iPhone virtual keyboard!).

We have also seen examples of "server-side computing," and its strong advantages and disadvantages. However, the greatest promise of this concept is now manifest in the Chrome OS from Google and its centering on the web and a browser as the focus.

Hardware can finally be irrelevant, as it was supposed to be. As it was promised to us so long ago. Our experience of the internet and its full promise can be delivered seamlessly, without any one company or platform coloring that experience. And it's midwifed by the plain search engine that became its own verb.

The future of computing can be defined with one word: ubiquitous. To get there the browser will need to be changed from something you open to being transparent and everywhere. There is a lot of exciting work looking to take us there, but rethinking the operating system paradigm is a great place to start.

My father, 70, called in amazement. Gmail, he said, had started showing ads for safes at exactly the time he and my brother were emailing back and forth about acquiring a new one for the barbershop. "It's like it read my mind!" he said. "How can it do that!?"

That was the moment he got it. We had talked before about the wonder of context-sensitive advertising, but finally it sank in.

So we imagined together. We talked about how expert Google is becoming at voice-processing, and how a phone call, really, isn't so different from an email. If today I'm served ads based on my emails, why not tomorrow based on my conversations?

We talked about location-sensitive advertising. And about the wonder of on-the-fly translation, and how I (perhaps even Dad?) may live to see the day when the ancient language barrier–the one referenced in Genesis!–disappears.

We talked about just how nifty Microsoft's Kinect really is. I speculated about the impact of cheap motion-capture technology. Video is hard for computers to process (though Google is working hard to crack that nut too). Mocap data is easier to store and search and analyze.

If my Kinect can identify me and monitor my movements today, then won't it soon be able to watch my sleeping baby's breathing? To issue an alert to security guards when an adult-sized skeleton runs through a bank lobby? And to identify him, simultaneously, maybe by face like Picasa? Won't some Kinecty-thing look out from my TV or down from the store-front to see whether I smile or frown at a humorous ad?

And my Dad started to get a little quiet. Because the future of computing, frankly, is creepy. For him monitored conversations and always-on living room cameras call up memories of Soviet totalitarianism.

"It's going to be 1984," he blurted. "Misguided people will get hold of it."

And I can't disagree. As we going barreling into this always-connected, ever-monitored world, our semi-autonomous cars are sure to miss some potholes and hairpin turns.

A laptop that requires Internet connectivity is another step down that road. I shudder with him.

And then I look at my daughter, 10. She can't imagine disconnectedness. She's never been in a car when the driver was lost. She can't remember seeing distant family only if they mailed you a photo. She wouldn't tolerate leaving a factual question unanswered because we don't have the right book in the house.

Whatever the future of computing holds, it's coming. And getting there is going to be a great ride.

It's difficult to write about the future of computing with any certainty. Faster, more powerful, and more accessible to the masses has proved true for many years and should continue along that path. Another trend that has continued to play out for years is the increasing role of internet integration in all aspects of computing. On everything from smart phones to super-computers, connecting to and utilizing data stored "in the cloud" is increasing exponentially. Less and less we find the "need" to work is a physically isolated computing environment. And more and more people are finding the advantages to computing on the cloud, such as device and OS independence, automatic data backup, and real-time collaboration and sharing of digital asset with others.

The exact future of computing isn't known for sure but it will continue tao rely more and more on the cloud.

Smaller, faster and more storage has historically been what people dream about in regards to the future of technology. The life cycle of the iPod is proof to this mindset among consumers and developers. However times have changed and so have our expectations. We desire to have the latest and greatest right when it comes out. Our hope is that our life will be simpler, more exciting, and entertaining. But as our world becomes more and more based on the consumption of electronics the more we lose apart of who we are. We have exchanged mental memory for wikipedia on our phones, facebook for day to day contact with friends and family, and true adventure for flashing the latest nightly of Cyanogenmod. I don't write these things to condemn computing. In fact I believe that technology is wonderful and exciting. I write this because I believe that the future of computing is limited. Yes, limited. The possibilities of new technologies abound. Wireless charging, e-readers, smart phones, seamless multiplatform experiences, IPV6, and HTML 5, are outstanding and will take us great places. But, they are all limited. They are limited by hardware, physics, software, financing, and a culture that hinders imagination. These obstacles have been overcome in the past and they will be overcome again. This means that the future of computing isn't limited by hardware or software but by our ability creatively fuse technology into our everyday lives. As long as computing is seen as computing and life is seen as life, technology will be limited. For computing to flourish it has to cease being technology and become apart of the physical world around us. As this happens the things that mean the most to us, family, friends and personal development, will be easier to focus on. This is exactly why I enjoy the technology being developed by Google. It isn't made to be cool or trendy, it is made with a purpose. It is made to be simple and to help bridge the gap between ones and zeros and our everyday lives.

The future of computing is definately cloud-based. more and more people are relying on smartphones, netbooks and tablets for day to day activities, only using full PCs for work or "serious" gaming. most of what we do on the pc now is in fact online, or moving online via services such as google docs. Really the only daily task I see as not moving entirely online currently is music, because people like to own their collections/have total control over what they listen to. Even this is moving online though, through programs like the zunepass.

While full powered pcs will never disappear totally, most users already spend most of their time on the web, and the convenience of being able to access all your data from your phone, your netbook, or the thin-client in your school/local library far outweighs the lack of local processing power. even that doesn't have to be a problem with the cloud, using services such as Amazon's EC2 to handle any computational load needed. Given a connection with enough bandwidth, even intensive things like CAD and gaming might be possible on a thin client.

The only current downsides to the cloud model are questions of connectivity/bandwidth, and that of security. With wifi ubiquitous in highly populous areas and high capacity wireless connections such as LTE slowly rolling out, high-quality continuous connectivity seems inevitable. Security is trickier. encryption is slow, but realistically the only option when allowing another complete control over your data storage. On the other hand people have shown through facebook that privacy is of less concern to most than convenience, so in a few years the security issue may not be. Only time will tellhttp://www.facebook.com/ken.cramer

From a professional/vocational point of view, the future of computing is the future of productivity. Today, we can do in an hour what used to take a week.

We used to be paid for a month of our time to design a structure or a product, today it's a week or in some cases a day. A car can be designed and tested without ever having to go outside.

My concern for this productivity from an engineering and societal point of view is simple. Can we continue to financially afford designing and building at the rate that we're capable of designing and building? What do we do with our citizens who are no longer needed because we have to wait before we can afford to build the next road?

What are the implications of further growth in productivity? How must we shift our paradigm in order to provide value to our fellow man and in turn a wage for ourselves as Americans?

"Computing" in it's best form will be transparent to the user. It will be another tool, like a watch, that we use to function.

It will monitor our body and let us understand what our brain might confuse and report to our health care provider should an adjustment in our medication be necessary.

It will keep our schedule and automatically sync to our various devices and alert us as to an upcoming event regardless of platform. Again, all transparent to the user of this information.

Computing will be as ubiquitous as the sunlight. It's just there and available as our tool and it will touch all aspects of our lives. From the net connected kitchen appliance to the net tracking of our vehicle, we will have information available that will help us be more productive, comfortable, and safe.

Today we can, and I do, Google any question that I don't have the answer to. Not only when I'm sitting at my desk, but from my HTC Evo Android phone and my Google connected Garmin GPS receiver. No longer do I need a phone book, map, library, nor encyclopedia to provide my research. This is a glimpse into the future as we continue to forge our path.

How we choose to handle our productivity will be up to us as a society. What will it hold for you?

It is hard for me to imagine a day, not so long ago, when writing this essay would have required the owning of a $500 computer, with another $100 each for operating system, document editing software package, and anti-virus application! After waiting for 10 minutes for all this stuff to load, I then was on tender-hooks hoping there wasn’t a power failure, crash, or a virus getting through destroying all my hard work. Then if I wanted to show this essay to someone else, they would have to wait until I got home before I could get it out of my computer, and hope I could export it into a format that they could then read. What a mess!

Today I don’t deal with any of that. I take my $300 net-book, with it’s free operating system, over to one of hundreds of free wi-fi hot spots, sit down and enjoy a fresh bagel with cream cheese, and within seconds I am logged into Google Docs typing this essay. If there is a power failure, or my computer is lost, stolen, or breaks; I can simply step over to a different computer and nearly seamlessly keep on working. If someday in the future I want to share this essay with anybody, I can log in through nearly any computer, or smart phone, and send or print a copy off in a wide variety of universal formats. Technology has gotten so much better.

However, there are still steps to be taken. The cloud is not yet as rich as the computers of a few years ago, and not all applications are yet available in the cloud. The simplest evolution is already in progress as developers everywhere are moving toward the cloud. I believe that applications will start to be developed to be more seamless between their cloud and desktop editions.

As the lines start to blur, how operating systems react and adjust will determine whether they continue to exist or not. I think that operating systems will become much more dynamic and flexible, while user accounts cease to exist solely on one computer or operating system. From a cloud-based perspective, a ‘user’ is a grouping of accounts on various web services, and how those web services are accessed is virtually irrelevant.

So if everything is fluid and dynamic, spread out over hundreds of web services, how then can anyone make sense of it? How can anyone track hundreds of user-names and passwords, or which data is on which service?

Some standards, like OpenID, are simplifying the process by using one user-name and password to access many different web services. However, a solution would need to also keep track of which services you signed up for and your user-name / password from other websites as well. When you approach a computer, weather you own it or not, you should be able to enter one user-name and one password to bring you into your own personal cloud portal (rendered by the operating system or an installed application) designed to get you to your data.

Such a portal may contain many features like the ones I am about to describe. There might be a home page of sorts, that would aggregate relevant data like news feeds, emails, voice messages, social media, current online friends, appointments, etc. There might be a collections zone aggregating all your photo albums, music collection, documents, contacts from across all your web services. There might be a start menu like interface listing all the web services as if they were installed programs, allowing one-click access. There might also be a devices section allowing control and displaying statuses of peripherals like printers, either on the local machine or available through the cloud. Finally, an offline sync system might be included to increase performance and maximize up-time.

An interface like this, would simplify the new increasing complexity of the web.

Presently, average citizens have many embedded computers in their house. They are found in alarm clocks, thermostats, microwaves, cars, and many other household products. The average person doesn't realize how common it is. This is a major accomplishment for computing in itself. In the future embedded computers will be even more prevalent and less discrete. These embedded computers are “hidden,” and I believe that the future of computing should not be hidden, dumbed down, or disguised. Consumers will want a do-it-all device that makes them feel like they can do anything with it. Like calculate the answer to life, the universe and everything, but Google can already do that.

In my opinion, for computing to be truly versatile, it must be “open.” Devices will be open source, use open standards, have the ability to integrate, and be easily accessible for families in need. Devices shouldn’t be exclusive or tied to phone carriers either. Due to their “openness,” people will be able to freely develop for the devices. Computing will be more intuitive and “easy” for even the most illiterate, but I believe that there will be a strong margin of “sophisticated” users that demand the most from their hardware. There are already signs of advanced web applications which will undoubtedly increase. Power users will still prefer local apps but secure their data online. This hybrid solution will be more common as Chrome OS or even Jolicloud begin to expand their user database.

We currently have people using computers and not knowing it. People who profess not to know how to use any computer, actually use ATMs, motor vehicles and telephones on a regular basis. Computing is pervasive in almost all societies on the planet. In the future almost all new devices will likely perform some sort of electronic computation.

Connectivity will increase to the point of 100% global wireless coverage. By ‘wireless’ I mean some part of the electromagnetic spectrum, not necessarily wi-fi as we have today. All devices will have very high levels of connectivity and reliability will probably exceed 99.99%. Connection speeds will continue to increase geometrically. The increase of connectivity will drive the pervasiveness of devices performing computations dramatically.

Each person and device will have a unique identifier. Addresses will no longer be allocated dynamically (like IP addresses), rather they will be allocated when manufactured or born. Unique and invariant identifiers are a prerequisite to secure computing. All communications will be encrypted using the originator’s key and all devices will have hardware based self validation. If will greatly reduce the possibility of spoofing of sender’s names or machines or devices. Though this may sound too much like big brother; I suspect that newborns will have an ID chip implanted after birth in order to obtain a high level of identity integrity that will be needed for computing security - a prerequisite for peaceful commerce and life on the planet. The social debate on this issue will be intense but I see no alternative. To participate in computation, you need to come to the table with you globally issued ID.

Global identifiers will unify the multiple identities we have today. Unification will be the logical conclusion that comes from secure identities. For example, if a person uses any device that cares about the user’s identity, the global identifier will allow that person to have a consistent computing experience as their global preferences will be known, their set of applications will be known and their data will be accessible by that person. All data will be owned by its creator and sharable with any other person or device to which access has been granted.

The transparency of computing will apply to the masses who are not involved directly in Information Technology. Most people will not event think about credentials, encryption, configuration, deployments and services, it will be like breathing air, it is just there. IT folk will be working to make everything stay transparent but the software team will likely not be doing much low level stuff, but rather reusing components for the plumbing of applications. Hardware folk will be working on some low level stuff including hardware level encryption and self validation.

One important aspect of transparency will be the removal of hardware platform and OS boundaries. Cloud computing will let code run on any platform and simply deliver the screen or data output over a common layer to other devices.

How do we get there from where we are? First, I suggest that we will only get there with the help of influential organizations (including corporations) which have realized that the world can be made a better place without making a buck on every move. Next, we must start, by taking the first steps - move your data to the cloud, get mobile, use a single identity and most of all - dream!

With all due respect to my esteemed fellow chrome-thirsty essayists, many of them are looking at their doorsteps instead of the horizon. Chrome OS, as radical as it is, is still only a sketch of the transformations to come.

Cloud computing encompasses data and even software today, but tomorrow, our processing power, memory, GPUs and even hardware drivers will follow our apps and data into the cloud. This will be the Total Cloud, simplifying almost every conceivable aspect of computing.

Consumer hardware will be simplified to wireless-enabled screens and lots of them. (Scoble will be in Heaven) - screens for work, screens for entertainment and tv, screens for mobile, with pixel real estate being the only limitation on what can be done on them. When buying computers, we'll be spared the job of cluing up on hardware beforehand. CPUs, RAM, motherboards, Graphics Cards and storage disks will recede from public awareness back into the world of computer engineering or hobbyists. Every gadget and peripheral will be cloud enabled and data transfer will happen in the cloud. For example, cameras will save their photos and videos directly to the cloud rather than to memory cards. USB and other ports will able to disappear from consumer devices. Stripped of these components, there'll be no drivers to boot or checks to run when switching on a computer. As exciting as Chrome OS's rapid boot will be (& my mouth waters Niagaraishly for it), tomorrow it will switch on instantaneously and battery life will be measured in days or weeks.

Processing power will be unlimited and free. All software processes will exist in the cloud and code won't ever come near a consumer PC. For instance using the Adobe After Effects cloud app of the future, every effect will be calculated on cloud computers using cloud processes and cloud energy, as fast or faster than they would be on a traditional PC. GPU computations for the latest computer games will happen in the cloud and as a result games will equally fast for all devices. With the burden of processing removed, the sole purpose of user devices will be input.

Best of all, with every device plugged into a single hub, real time collaboration will be possible in ways unthinkable today. For example, on Dec 14, 2020, a googler running a fashion magazine picks up a screen at home to see how one of his photographers is doing with a European shoot. It switches on instantly with his preferred apps and websites immediately available. He taps picasa and sees the photos appear in real time as they're taken. He makes an editorial suggestion in a comment, which displays on the photographer's camera screen. Seconds later photos appear reflecting his instructions. He picks out his favourites and his image processing staff are alerted and get to work on them. On his way into work in his self-driven google car he makes adjustments of his own in the photoshop app on his cellphone, using almost no battery power.

Of course, drastic innovations will be necessary before all this can happen. Computing vision has always been constrained by the limitations of hardware - and in the same way that huge advances had to happen in order for the two decades-old notion of cloud computing to be realised, huge breakthroughs will be needed for the Total Cloud. If the Total Cloud is to be responsive, connections will need to be extremely fast, and drastic innovations will be necessary to overcome latency limits. Bandwidth will have to be universal and unlimited, and offline will have to be a thing of the past. Net access will have to become a public utility like the roads or streetlighting. This will be no mean breakthrough, but it will come.

Beyond that, wireless power from the cloud and the end of power supplies. Shape-shifting displays that can resize from miniature cellphones to 100-inch tv screens.

All this is on its way. I'd love to get a foretaste of it in Chrome OS!

The future of computing is a giant cloud of integration between computers, phones, sensors... any electronic device. I'll wake up and my computer will know my breakfast preferences, my morning habits, my commute, the weather, and it will predict my needs and wants. Most of the annoyances of the world - traffic, human forgetfulness (what groceries do I need) - can all be gotten rid of by technology. The cloud will know me, and will do its best to make my life "happy".

The future of computing is also a world of information without borders. Instantaneous language translation will allow me to communicate with anyone with ease. An efficient marketplace of ideas will foster innovation and growth, perhaps most importantly in developing nations.

The future of computing will resemble the history of motors. The vast majority of people don't ever see or think about motors - even though they are present in so many things that affect our daily life. Likewise, in the future, these will be our phones, our new kind of books, our new kinds of television, our new kinds of newly imagined things. Computing itself will only be the concern of those that design or repair our systems, or those who seek a perverse sort of hobby.

As I leave the house for my morning drive to Calix and step into the Camry, my favorite podcast "Planet Money" has started playing. My Galaxy S phone, sitting snuggly in my pocket, knows to start playing the podcast because it has detected that the bluetooth device it has paired to is a car audio device. I also notice that the display in my Camry has popputed a map with nearby gas stations after calulating the price and the distance to figure out that most cost effective place to fill the tank. I drive to Chevron on the route to my work and as soon as I step out of the car, the NFC reader on the pump has detected who I am and has activted the pump. I just had to tap the "Confirm Transaction" button that popped up my Galaxy S.

I'm thankful that my drive to work is short, but still dread the fact that I must drive to work. I curse Comcast and wish for a faster internet connection to my house as I pull up to the parking lot. As I step into the office, thru GPS detection the phone has gone to sleep, saving precious battery life and calls are now now routed to my desk machine running Chrome OS.

Wow! I love living in the future. Things work just the way you expect them to.

Computing to us humans in the past decades has evolved. From what was once an experiment to something we do every day of our lives. Computing's evolution has not only progressed in the form of processing speed, or size of hardware, it has progressed to almost be another sense to us in our lives.

Computings almost become a part of people, like a useful organ. We use technology to run down so much information and gather the bits and pieces we need. It's a guidance we need to get to where we are going, like our eyes will show us the way. Computing shows us the way not only in sight but in knowledge. Knowledge is an extreme entity in the computing world, like the blood of the system.

What's even more remarkable is our capability to use computers, technology, data, and compute it all to progress within that very same field. We use technology to build better technology, thus advancing farther and farther. And most of that is all thanks to computing.

So what lies in the future? I can't really explain but I know where we are now with technology and computing is astounding and we can figure out the answers to the deepest questions, or calculate the exact data of a complex situation with computing technology. So what ever is in the future of it all, has to be amazing because it only keeps getting better and better.

The future of computing is one experience, from any machine. Reliable connectivity will allow all data and preferences to be saved through the cloud ready to go, anywhere. It will be fast, secure, and always up to date with absolutely no effort on the user end.